Finding Bucky
by I-AM-SiriusLOCKED
Summary: Bucky Barnes: hitman, wanted man, man with a plan - find out who he is & get this damn arm fixed. How can he do that? Find an engineer; someone isolated from anyone else who won't ask questions. Cue Alvie Kennings, the dropout genius, a loose cannon that's worth the risk. But Bucky isn't the only one with skeletons in his closet; Alvie understands him more than he had ever planned.
1. Prologue

_"Don't care if he's guilty, don't care if he's not_

 _He's good and he's bad and he's all that I got..._

 _It wasn't a wrong or a right he could choose,_

 _He did what he had to do."_

 _-The Devil's Backbone, The Civil Wars_

 **FINDING BUCKY**

 **PROLOGUE**

There is an olive-skinned woman in her mid-twenties, dressed like she was caught in a thrift shop explosion, lying on the floor of her New York apartment. She is staring unseeingly at the ceiling as her eyes flicker from left to right to up to down. For the last few months, she has been going by the name of Athena- the fact that she chose her own alias, and that the alias is derived from a goddess, says quite a lot about the woman. However, it is still not quite as pretentious as her birth name, which is something at least.

To the outside observer, she looks a little mad, mumbling to herself while sprawled on her back like that. But that is because the woman does not see the ceiling of her apartment; she sees binary and code, and the world wide web flies across her vision as she weaves through it, without moving a muscle. She is the flipside of the science fiction trope wherein a computer gains humanity- born a human, she thought it would be a good idea to make herself a computer. Whether this actually _was_ a good idea remains to be seen.

At the current moment, she is helping an AI named JARVIS constantly and unceasingly rewrite and overwrite the key codes that would launch all the world's nuclear missiles. The AI is working slightly faster than her, because she is being forced to multitask- at the same time, she is also creating a complex false trail of plane tickets and ATM uses that will lead the HYDRA agents chasing her a long way away, and sending a series of rather explicit texts to her significant other, who happens to be the aforementioned organisation's former greatest asset. To mix up any of the three activities would be disastrous, not to mention very embarrassing, so she is taking more care than she normally would.

She looks a little mad because she is. But perhaps this is the wrong place to start.


	2. Act I Chapter I

**ACT ONE: TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SAILOR**

 **CHAPTER I**

Alvie had always spurned the idea that night was intended for sleeping. Not purposely, of course. It was just that when she was working, as she so often was, time was lost track of and suddenly, the alarm was telling her to wake up.

It was three in the morning and she was in bed, tapping away absent-mindedly on one of her laptops. She didn't look up when she heard the click of her apartment door opening, assuming it was the wind, nor did she do anything to acknowledge the near-silent footsteps coming from outside her bedroom door. What she did react to, however, was the low _thwump_ of her refrigerator being opened.

 _Shit!_ She thought, then her always-reliable internal dialogue kicked in.

 _There's someone eating my food!_

 _Shit!_

 _What do I do?_

 _What do people normally do in situations like these?_

 _Get their husband to go looka' round the house with a baseball bat._

 _I have neither husband nor baseball bat._

 _I have myself and a laptop._

 _But I don't want to._

 _Someone's eating my food-_

 _FINE! Fine. I'm going._

Cursing herself, Alvie slipped out of bed, gripping the laptop tightly in both hands. She peered around the edge of the door, saw a dark figure silhouetted in the fridge light. She took a deep breath, swallowed, and ran towards it, bringing the laptop up high and screaming like a she-demon.

The figure spun round, caught her left arm with his right and pushed it downwards, sending the laptop skittering across the floor.

"Alvine Kennings," the figure told her. She couldn't see their face, but the voice was low, monotone. There was something else to it, too - exhaustion, she guessed. "Twenty-six. Family long dead, completely isolated."

"What -"

"You were certified as a genius when you were a kid and expelled from your degree eight months after that for truancy, but you're still ranked second on HYDRA's list of potentially dangerous unknowns since the algorithm picked you up," he continued, now talking quicker, hurrying to get the words out.

Her fingers curled in his grip. "How the hell do you know that?" she demanded. Second? She was only _second?!_ Last time she had checked, she was sitting pretty at first -

 _Focus, Kennings. Focus on the maniac who's got you in a wristlock. We can worry about my reputation later._

"The same way you know you were on that list. I found your information on it." He released her wrist, held his right hand up. The left stayed motionless at his side. "I got told that information. But you managed to infiltrate the biggest secret of the world's formerly most covert agency."."

Alvie rubbed her hand, trying to get the blood circulating. "Damn right, I did. Who are you? Why are you here? What's wrong with your other arm?"

"It's broken. I need you to fix it, and that's what I'm trying to find out."

"I'm not a doctor, I can't mend bones," she snapped, talking fast before the adrenaline ran out and she was left only with the cocktail of panic and terror inside her. She waved her arm, and the lights in her kitchen flickered on.

The man's face was dirty and bruised, with dark hair hanging unkempt around it. His clothes, ragged and filthy, hung loosely on him, and the knuckles on his right hand were skinned and pockmarked, his fingernails broken and caked in mud. His left arm gleamed dully under a layer of dirt.

"My God," she murmured, staring at the left arm as the fear dissolved to be replaced by shock and a morbid fascination, "you're dead. They reported you dead, I saw it. After the helicarriers crashed, they said you died."

He lifted a shoulder. Clearly, his indifference seemed to say, the reports were faulty.

" _Merde."_ She sighed, and ran her fingers through her messy, dark hair. "Step away from the refrigerator, please."

He slammed the door shut and moved away from it, still keeping within arm's reach of her. He said nothing as Alvie took his appearance in, just stood there with his broken arm instinctively shielded by the rest of his body and his eyes unblinking as he waited.

"I could get into so much crap for this," she informed him. "Like, seriously. I'm _neutral_. I try my damn best not to give a shit about superheroes."

He stared at her, impassively.

"Why should I help you? You're an assassin- you're one of the bad guys."

"I thought you said you were neutral," he replied. "You definitely turned down SHIELD."

" _Merde,_ " she said again. She didn't like it when other people were right, and this... this whatever he was now, had no right to correct her in her own home. "Are you going to kill me when I'm done?" she asked.

"Don't see why I should."

 _Nice way of putting it._

 _Think about this, Kennings. Normal people do not help assassins._

 _But imagine the tech in that arm…_ that was tempting. _Very_ tempting.

"Well?"

"Don't _hurry_ me, man! This is an important decision!" she exclaimed. "You're a terrorist! I'm off the grid! That could be a very bad combination, and you, you just _broke in_ and I am having a very hard time processing all of this!" She strode away from him and closed her eyes, pressed the palms of her hands against them, tried to block out the intruder. "Jesus Christ. Why me?"

"Because you're the only person I can trust."

Alvie's hands dropped to her sides and she looked over her soldier at the bruised and bedraggled man. "Then you must be in a bad place right now, soldier," she said softly. "And that was a rhetorical question."

He finally stopped looking at her, his eyes settling on the floor. He looked so beaten, so bloody and broken, that Alvie realized to turn him away would be a crime in itself. Damn her conscience for getting the better of her, and her poor judgement for pitying him.

"Get a shower," she told him, and he glanced up through his greasy hair at her. "I'm not touching you when you're like that. I'm assuming your arm won't get short-circuited by the water when it's already dead."

"It's waterproof."

"Amazing," she said drily, "bathroom's through that door. Do you, uh, do you want me to turn it on?"

He nodded. She led him into her bathroom, distinctly uncomfortable with the fact that he could stab her in the back at literally any moment, and turned the shower dial up until it was almost scalding.

"I've got some of my ex's clothes left that should fit you, I'll leave them outside the door," she told him, fiddling with her now damp sleeve. "Right. I- I'll go wait, out there. Yeah." She darted into her lounge, threw herself onto the sofa and waved her hand at the TV so it switched on.

 _"Tonight on XXX Babes Network-"_

"Shit! Off! He can hear!"

She leant back, biting her lip as the screen cut out to black. Alvie had been hoping for a quiet night, and getting a decent bit of sleep so she would be ready to tinker on the big project in the morning. Well, it looked like she had other priorities now. Her eyes glazed over as she thought about what she had done, how it was very probably a terrible idea, and how he would most likely break her neck if she tried to go back on the decision now.

 _Barnes. Bucky Barnes, James Buchanan. Winter Soldier, according to the HYDRA file dump. Probably the most dangerous person I've ever met._

 _But I'm not running away. Hell, I tried to give him concussion with a Macbook. That's probably one of the worst ideas I've ever had._

 _He said he wouldn't kill me - well, he said he had no reason to,_ she amended herself, _hell, imagine thinking like that. Like everything's just a matter of practicality. Must be nice, not to feel guilty at all._

She became aware of a presence to one side of her, glanced in that direction and saw Barnes staring down at her in a clean shirt and jeans, hair still damp from his shower. Now the filth had gone from his face she could see the shadows under his eyes, the gaunt cheeks of a man who did not have time for a proper meal. The pitiful visage tempered her distrust of the ghostly HYDRA hitman- that, and his decision to abandon them in the first place. It must have taken a lot of nerve to do that, and a lot of faith in that he was running from the bad guys.

"Y'need a haircut," she told him vaguely, since she was hardly about to say what was running through her scatty head. "And a shave." He pursed his lips, flexed the fingers on his right hand. "Yeah, yeah, I'll fix your arm. I might be crazy for doing it, but that was a moot point anyway. Lemme get a looka it first though. Sit." As he did, she stood, walking over to the kitchen cutlery drawer and pulling a screwdriver out of it.

 _He scares me. Not the murderer part, but… those_ eyes.

 _He probably scares himself._

She sat back down next to him, banged it against his arm.

"Titanium alloy," she told him vaguely, "'s nice. Expensive." She slipped the screwdriver gently in between two of the disjointed plates on his upper arm. "This hurt?"

"No."

She dug it in further. "How about this?"

"Yeah."

"Scale of one to ten?"

"Seven and a half. That's where my arm starts."

Alvie raised an eyebrow, pulled the screwdriver out. It was covered in mud, blood and a purplish goo. "You're good at hiding it."

"I can't let pain distract me." Barnes stared at her as she wiped the gunk onto a tissue. "What d'you think?"

"I think that HYDRA's a bitch," she muttered bitterly. "But yeah, I should be able to fix your arm. It'll take a while, though, I'll need to study it." She ran her fingers over the shining metal, expression intense. She could still feel his gaze on her. "I'm a programmer though, not an engineer, so I'm not making any promises."

"You don't think you can do it?"

"No. I'm just saying you owe me more than you would otherwise," she said, chewing her lip. Of course she could do it, anything in the STEM field came as naturally to her as walking, with the possible exception of biochem. She wasn't particularly enthusiastic about helping him, but an opportunity to work on technology as unique as this…

"Thanks," he said quietly, and for the first time, she heard hint of emotion in his voice that wasn't dull resignation.

"No problemo," she replied, still fixated by his arm. "Are you okay staying here while I fix you?"

He nodded.

"Right. Not much of a talker, are you? Lucky for you I go on enough to fill the gaps." Her eyes settled on one of the many scratches on his face, just below his left eye. Some of the wounds seemed newer than others, and she wondered what he had been doing. "I'll make food. You do eat, right?"

"I was fed via an IV drip, but I know how to fucking eat, Kennings," he said sourly. Alvie paused, then started sniggering. Barnes cocked his head, but his expression was no longer a negative one as he narrowed his eyes at her. It was like he had never seen someone laugh before.

"I think I have a couple pancakes left," she told him, standing up.

 **A/N I was kind of 50/50 about uploading this, since I have yet to finish Clever and it isn't exactly the best writing I've ever done. BUT, A) it intersects with my surprisingly popular** ** _Coffee Run_** **, B) I like the oc, C) it's probably got the best cover I've ever made, and D) it's the first fic I've written that has acts. Which is EXCITING. Act One will be post-TWS to pre-AoU, Act Two will be over the events of Civil War, and then if there are anymore they will follow the MCU timeline like that. Let me know what you think x**


	3. Act I Chapter II

**CHAPTER II**

Alvie sat at her workbench in her smallest spare room, soldering a circuit board. Hissing as she missed the base point for the fourth time in a row, she set down her tools and rubbed her eyes.

 _I have a mass murderer asleep on my couch._

 _Excellent observation, Kennings. Ten points to Ravenclaw._

 _But what am I meant to_ do _? What if like, Black Widow or Captain America turn up and tell me to give him to them?_

 _Distract them with the offer of casual sex._

 _This isn't helping. I'm not a SHIELD agent, I can't protect him._

 _There are no more SHIELD agents, dumbass. And if the Winter Soldier's gone underground, he's probably not the biggest priority._

 _… So neither am I._

 _Exactly. I'm safe- at least, as much as I normally am._

She pinched the bridge of her nose and cursed him. _He could probably load a gun with his eyes closed, but he needed me to show him how to use a shower._

Her instinctively analytic mind had observed that he seemed to have two modes; the first she had expected, and was the Winter Soldier through and through: when he talked like a machine and acted as though enemies were about to spring out of the walls at any moment. The second one was what confused her, though- he had first acted this way about twelve hours after he arrived, probably when it became clear that she was not a threat. The only way she could think to describe it was lethargic; he relied on walls and furniture for support when standing, his eyelids were heavy and his speech was slow, almost slurred, as if he was struggling to talk at all. Although she preferred the latter, it confused Al, and she didn't like it when things confused her.

"Barnes!" she yelled, "get in here!"

He was surprisingly fast, she noted, and quiet. Today was a Winter Soldier day. "What?"

"Honesty hour," she said, standing up, "you freak me out. Like proper, straight-up fear. And I dunno if you know this, but that is _not_ enjoyable. Having Russia's most effective weapon bunking in my spare bedroom is _not_ fun. And I'm like, where is this benefiting _me_? I am not a charitable person, in case you weren't aware. I feel like that would move me way too close to being a good guy."

"Where is this going?" he asked.

"Going? It's not going anywhere. I just wanted to prove a point."

"Which is?"

"I said all of that in Russian, then Mandarin, then English. And you didn't even bat an eyelid- you didn't even notice." She stepped towards him. "What _are_ you?"

He looked back down at her. His eyes were the blue-gray of gun metal and just as cold. It wasn't a thousand-yard stare, which she would have understood. They were just... dead. Wherever this man's soul was, it was not bold enough to be seen through his eyes.

"I don't know," he said quietly.

 _He's a gun_ , she thought, _but what else?_ Before she had time to doubt her actions, she reached out a little and brushed her fingers against his own human ones.

The reaction was instantaneous; he jumped backwards, jerking his arms out of her reach. "What the hell was that for?" he snarled.

"Testing a theory," she said, a little sadly. "I don't think you've ever been touched like that, Barnes, at least that you remember. I think you're so used to being hit, it's the only thing you can imagine happening to you."

"I'm a soldier," he said coldly, clenching his fist, "that's obvious."

She shook her head. "I think it's more than that. I've met soldiers- they flinch, yeah, but not when they know they're not in a combat situation." She held out her hand again, open palm facing upwards. "If you want me to help you, I need to know I'm not fixing a weapon, but a person. I need you to trust me, Bucky."

He flinched as if she had touched him again. He was feral, almost inhuman, but not evil- at least, not that she could tell. "Fifty years, and I never heard that name," he said softly. "Now, I get called that more than anything else in the last month." He hesitated, then extended his own hand and placed it atop hers, so his fingers brushed her inner wrist.

She shivered, thinking of how that hand had most likely choked the life out of dozens of people. _Don't think about that now_. _Besides, it'd be unfair if you held that against him, considering… well, considering everything._ "Well, James Buchanan Barnes," she said, forcing a lightness into her tone, "we've got work to do."

"I thought you were scared of me?" he asked.

"What? Oh, no. I just needed something to say," she explained.

He stared at their still-touching hands. "So… so you're not?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"That would be telling," she shrugged. "But why should I be? I doubt you're planning on killing the only person who can fix your arm."

"Instinct," he said. "Common sense."

"Instinct I'm not sure about, but common sense? I don't think I've ever had that," she said. "Also, I have another question."

"What?"

"Why do you get so sleepy all of a sudden?"

"Why do you care?"

"Because it's pissing me off that I don't know something," she said, and for a moment it seemed like he was going to smile.

"I'm... I'm not used to being awake but not doing anything. When I am it was usually when they were working on me, they would give me anaesthetic at first so I wasn't volatile. Then I guess I got used to it, and they didn't need to."

"Like Pavlov's dogs," she observed.

"What?"

"This behavioral psychologist, he did this experiment on conditioning where he..." she noticed his blank look. "Nothing. Don't matter. It… it's just that it's sick, the way they treated you."

"I wouldn't know. You're the first person outside HYDRA and... and him, who's talked to me."

"I'm honoured," she said, "Bucky?"

"What?"

"You can stop holding my hand now."

He looked down at their touching palms and smiled- properly smiled- as he dropped his hand to his side. It was a cute smile, Alvie thought - thin and sharp, like a knife, but it still somehow softened his face. "I didn't realize we still-"

"Don't worry about it," she said, patting his shoulder. "Now get outta my workshop."

 **A/N thank you for all the interest this has already! I didn't intend to upload another chapter so soon, but eh. Enjoy and please review x**


	4. Act I Chapter III

**CHAPTER III**

Alvie was deep into the land of nod, sleeping far too soundly for someone sheltering a known terrorist in the room next door, when the jarring sound of a hoarse yell came through her bedroom door. Hot on its heels was the noise of something being smashed, and the glittering sound of glass shards skittering across floorboards. With a groan she lifted her face from the pillow and wondered what the hell was going on, and then remembered her new roommate. Had he been attacked? Had he brought someone home _to_ attack? Had he brought someone home to have sex with on her couch?

 _Unlikely._

She rolled out of bed, grabbed the metal pole she had recently equipped her bedroom with and peered around the doorway. Unfortunately subtlety had never been her strong point, and Barnes, who was stood in the middle of her living area with a bleeding hand from the shattered vase, glared at her with such a ferocity that Alvie actually took a step back.

"Got any smart comments?" he shot at her, hostility in every syllable. Still, at least he was showing some emotion.

"Got any money to pay for my vase?" she hit back at him. He looked, with the utmost kindness, like complete shit – his face was slick with sweat and he was panting like he had run a marathon. Alvie, who recognized the symptoms of night terrors, dropped the metal pole and emerged from her room. "Are you… are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he muttered, sucking the cut on his hand dry.

"Right. You know you're safe here, yeah?" she asked, edging forward and raising her hands in lieu of a white flag. "You're under my protection, remember?"

"Well, _that's_ reassuring."

"Christ, dude. You ever heard of being nice to the people who offer you charity?"

"Wasn't top of HYDRA's list of desired attributes for their prize dog," he snapped, "sorry if I don't trust batshit crazy people."

"I am _not_ crazy!" she cried out, marching up to him and jabbing a finger into the center of his chest. "Listen up, smartass. I am the only god damn person in the whole entire world who is capable of fixing your arm. If you don't like me, the door's right freaking there! Enjoy being an invalid!"

"Do you have any damn idea who you're talking to? You can't kick me out! I'm the Winter Soldier! You should be terrified of me!"

"And here I am," Alvie retorted, "nothing more than moderately pissed off." She took a deep breath, forcing herself to be the bigger person (figuratively speaking, of course). "Show me your hand."

"What?"

"Show me your hand. I can stitch it up."

Any other body part and Alvie was certain he would have done it himself, but he needed one hand to mend the other and either way you looked at it, _that_ wasn't happening anytime soon. Now looking away with his jaw clenched, he extended his bloodied right hand towards her.

"It'll only need a couple," she told him, "go sit at the bar, I'll get my first aid kit."

She cleaned him up in heated, awkward silence. He didn't wince as the needle pierced his skin, and she wasn't even using local anaesthetic.

"Nobody can track you here," she told him. "You're safe."

"I found you."

She snapped the silky thread between her teeth. "I was getting lazy," she said, "after you arrived I quadrupled my security measures. I'm in four different places right now, and none of them are here. Guess I should thank you for pushing me to do it."

He flexed his fingers, testing the pull of the stitches. "You sure?"

"I'd bet my life on it," she said. "Bucky… you don't have to be the Winter Soldier all the time. Trying to scare me won't work, so stop bothering with it. For both our sanities' sakes, relax a little, alright?"

Some of the burning rage had left his eyes, now. "Why're you helping me?" he asked. "You don't… you don't make sense. You're not threatened. I'm not bribing you. What d'you get out of this?"

"Uh... dunno. You got a cool arm, I suppose. That helps."

"That's not a good enough reason."

" _Cherié,_ " she said lightly, "I never have a good reason for doing anything. Please try not to pop your stitches, alright? I ain't doing it again." She shoved her first aid kit into the cupboard beneath the breakfast bar and hopped off of the stool. "Nightmares are nothing to be ashamed of, ya know."

"Mine are," he said without looking at her. Alvie felt her heart twist a little bit. Here was this man, fierce and formidable, who woke up in terror and lashed out at the thing nearest to him.

 _What does it take,_ she wondered, _to scare the Winter Soldier?_

Well, the answer to that was pretty easy to find. _Ghosts._

"Kennings?"

She paused on her way back to the bedroom. "Barnes?" she replied, looking over her shoulder at him. He was stood up now too, looking, for the first time, as though his fight-or-flight instinct wasn't taking over his mind.

"Thanks."

Alvie smiled. "No problem," she said. "But you have to trust me, Bucky. Please. I can't help you if you don't let me in."

"I can't…" he began, and swallowed. "I don't trust people. I don't normally need their help, either."

"Then make me the exception that proves the rule. I mean, I _am_ pretty exceptional," she said, and chuckled at her own joke. "Ya really think that _I_ am a threat to you?"

He took her in – the lack of clothes, the soft skin of someone who had never had to fight, the relaxed and unconcerned body language. _Normally when people look at me like that,_ Alvie thought, _we both end up with our clothes off. I somehow don't think that's on the table right now._

"No," Bucky said at last. "You're probably the least threatening person I've ever seen."

Alvie spun around on her heel. "Was that a _compliment?_ " she asked, quite impressed.

"No."

"Hey!" she punched his shoulder, and yelped. "You feel like you're made of steel, dude. _Ouch._ "

"Don't punch me, then," he replied. Alvie caught his eye and realized that he was actually, really, _joking._ Sort of.

"Hilarious," she sighed, struggling to keep a grin off of her face. "Get some sleep. You're kind of an asshole when you're tired."

"I'm not tired."

"Then you're just an asshole," she laughed, stepping out of arm's reach. "And clean up my vase before morning, please."

"Go to bed, Kennings."

She waved over her shoulder as she slammed her bedroom door behind her, and paused to consider the last couple of minutes. It occurred to her that it had been one of the most enjoyable conversations that she had had in years.

 _I need to get out more,_ she thought, crawling back into bed. She fell asleep as dawn rose, and Bucky allowed her a few hours more than he had done yesterday before waking her up with the glare that indicated she had better start working. Slowly, _ever_ so slowly, and against the expectations of both parties, it seemed that they were starting to get along.


	5. Act I Chapter IV

**CHAPTER IV**

Alvie dragged the reclining leather chair out of her thought room, and ordered him to sit in it and keep still. That was a task he failed spectacularly at, constantly fidgeting at every little disturbance, so while she figured out how to open up his arm, she gave him a kids' toy to play with- the one with the little ball you clicked up into the air, and tried to catch with the small plastic net. Somehow, it distracted him well enough to keep still otherwise.

"Y'know," he said, on his 163rd consecutive catch, "when I asked you what I had missed out on in the last seventy years, I didn't think this would be what you showed me."

Finally, a line of panels running along the length of his arm slid backwards, juddering as they did; she hissed triumphantly. "It's the little things," she said vaguely, examining the grimy wirings within that connected to a stump that must have been what was left of his arm. "This… this is amazing. I mean, the engineering itself looks old, but it's practically ahead of the technology we have even now. The power it should take to run this, and yet there's no charging points so it must all be your own body, and how all the plates are separately wired to allow better coordination… Wow."

"Stop objectifying me," he said drily, and she whacked him with a screwdriver.

"I think the wire here must have slipped," she told him, tapping one of the big tubes above his elbow. "Right- _boop_ \- here. You're lucky it wasn't one that connected to the actual arm, or I doubt I could do a thing. But I should probably clean it too."

"How?"

"Put you through a car wash," she said, then sniggered at his expression. "Nah, I'll buy some supplies and do it here. Might take a bit longer than I thought, though."

"How long is longer?" Barnes asked.

"Patience, dude. I dunno, maybe a month if I'm careful, and I should probably be careful considering I've never done this before. Before you throw a hissy, you are completely welcome to continue your journey of self-discovery while staying here, so long as you don't bring SHIELD or HYDRA home with you."

He gave her a sidelong glance. "You still might not want to put up with me for that long."

"Eh," she shrugged, "you're interesting, and like I said, you have a cool arm. I can live with that."

"I doubt it."

She rolled her eyes. "See this shirt?" she asked, plucking at the loose tee she was wearing over her underwear. "This shirt comes with a six-month internship at Stark Industries' R&D division. If I can put up for Iron Man for half a year, I can deal with you."

Barnes' brow furrowed. "That internship wasn't on your file."

"Neither was my work with AIM, or Cybertec. D'you know why? Because I took it off. Not to brag, but if all the stuff I did was on HYDRA's database, I'd probably move up from second on the list of unknowns."

"You outsmarted the algorithm," said Barnes, "that should be impossible."

"Hah! I've done a lot of impossible things. You know I helped Stark create his UI, right? Secret project, extra credit. Then we argued over whether he should try again except make it a full smart AI instead of the self-developing interface JARVIS is, and he kicked me out and filed an injunction so I couldn't admit I'd had any part of it. Which was pretty harsh, I thought. I mean _sure_ we were hooking up, which probably broke all kindsa PR rules and definitely put a strain on our working relationship, but still. There was no need to be such an ass about it. I _told_ him, I said, haven't you ever seen a bad sci-fi movie! AI are a bad idea, man! Thank the Lord he listened even if he did dump me. Prat."

"But you beat the algorithm," Barnes repeated as she paused for breath.

"Yeah, yeah. It took me ages, though. And I failed spectacularly, several times." She squirmed under the stare he was giving her. "Look, stuff like this has always been easy to me. I can't spell for shit, the only thing I can read faster than a six-year old can is code, and at real life stuff I'm about as talented as a dead horse. Tech is like… my gift, and I had to pay with everything else. Including a social life, it seems." _Not to mention a normal person's understanding of right and wrong, which is probably why I'm helping this guy._

"SHIELD must've been devastated they didn't catch you," Barnes observed.

"You're too kind," she said with a false blush. "And oh, did they try. But I'm not letting anyone else decide what to do with my life." She reached into his arm, brushed two wire ends together and the titanium plates snapped shut. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to wash my hands."

She felt his eyes fixed on the back of her neck as she walked to her kitchen sink, and shivered. _Pull yourself together_ , she chastised herself, emptying half the bottle of hand soap onto her palm.

"You talk to yourself."

"Hm? Sorry?" she turned around, bubbly water dripping onto the floor. Bucky had moved from the chair to the bar, and was giving her an odd look.

"I…" he shook his head. "Nothing."

She shook her hands dry and kept her eyes averted from him as she walked back into the lounge area and grabbed a laptop.

"Before you ask," she said, not looking up, "I'm gonna look up old HYDRA tech, see if there's anything in there that'll help me."

"I wasn't going to."

"What?"

"Ask."

"Oh," she said, "of course you weren't. Ya know, it is okay to ask me questions." She finally glanced up at him, and gave him a small smile. "Who knows? I might even answer 'em. And it'll make the time you're here slightly more bearable if we actually talk."

"I doubt that," said Bucky, turning and walking away to sit on the floor and stare at the wall, still popping that ridiculous toy. Sighing, Alvie looked back down at her screen.

"So," she said, "you wanna re-engage with the world, huh?"

"You don't give up, do you?" he asked, staring at the wall.

"Wouldn't be alive if I did, most likely. But ya want my advice for becoming a person again? Go get a takeaway, and find a hooker. Cheap food and cheap sex, you've got everything covered."

He didn't respond, but something in his expression told her he disagreed.

"Seriously," she insisted, "big emotions are overrated. You gotta live a life of hedonism, Barnes, and-"

"Stay neutral?" he said at last, and she winked.

"Works for me. Don't ya think I live a happy and fulfilling life, hm?" she said, working her way through the HYDRA file dump that the Black Widow had recently dropped upon the world. "I could move halfway across the world tomorrow, leave all of this behind, and it wouldn't upset me a bit. I've got all I need in here." She tapped her forehead. "No ties."

"You don't care," he said, and she shook her head. "About anything."

"Nothing personal." She looked up from the laptop at him for a fraction of a second. She had expected pity, perhaps, but there was nothing except a slight confusion in his expression. _The poor man's head must be a mess._ "It's just advice," she told him. "Not an order. You don't have to do as anyone tells you anymore, remember?"

"I wouldn't listen to you, anyway."

"Oh, _thanks._ "


	6. Act I Chapter V

**CHAPTER V**

"Kennings? Alvine?"

"Alvie's fine," she said, looking up from her laptop to the sound of Barnes' voice coming from the bathroom. "Al, if you're pressed for time. Or, alternatively, Hot Piece of Ass."

"I need your help."

"With what?" she asked, warily.

"Shaving. Kinda hard with one arm, especially when you gave me a straight razor."

"Oh, I can do that," she said, standing up. "And the razor's the only one I have. It was my dad's."

"I didn't ask whose it was, I asked if you could help me," Barnes said shortly, as she pushed the door open and froze as she realized he was naked from the waist up. He was facing away from her, razor dropped in the sink and his hand bracing himself against the porcelain- _sleepy mood_ , she noted. Safer. He looked up and saw her in the mirror. "Stop objectifying me."

She blushed and raised her eyes to the reflection of his face. "We need to talk about manners," she mumbled. "Sorry I didn't have any shaving foam."

"I can take it," Barnes said, and she wondered why HYDRA hadn't killed him for his sarcastic streak.

"Sit on the edge of the bath, I can't reach otherwise." She stood between his splayed legs and flipped the razor open, tinker's hands steady despite the hammering of her heart. This was... intimate. "So I guess you trust me now, then," she said.

Barnes waited until she had lifted the blade from his jaw to speak. "Guess so."

"'S probably a bad idea," she admitted, "You're most likely the first person ever to do so."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Well, I hack into NATO for fun." Her fingers brushed against his now smooth skin, and his shoulders tensed. _It must be taking all his effort_ , she mused, _to fight the urge to disarm me. Poor bastard._

"You sure you're not scared of me?"

"Ninety per cent. Why?"

"Your breathing's erratic. Pupils dilated."

"That ain't fear," she informed him. "But seriously, I am amazed you haven't strangled me yet. I'm holding a blade to your throat," she added. _Plus, there's stuff you don't know about me. If you did, I doubt you'd let me anywhere near you, let alone with a weapon._

He caught her wrist and held it away from him. "Thanks for reminding me," he muttered, dropping her hand and clenching his own fist.

"Hey- if it helps, grab onto something to stop you trying to disarm me." She returned the razor to his throat. "Deep breaths, Barnes. You're safe." It ran across his carotid artery.

He grabbed something, as she had told him to- however, the something turned out to be the back of her thigh, fingers digging tightly into her soft flesh in panic. "Sorry," he said immediately, and she smirked.

"Keep it universal." She finished in silence, and as she folded up the razor he lifted his hand from her leg to his jaw. "You're welcome."

"What now?" he asked her, as she stepped back.

"Well, now I start cleaning your arm. I hope you're not bored of that toy yet."

Still shirtless, he followed her out of the room. "You have a television, right?"

"Yes. Yes I do. It's also very distracting, so if you want me to irreparably break you because I was too engaged by the fresh trials and tribulations of the Kardashian family, I suggest we keep it off."

"Who're the Kardashians?"

"Oh, sweetheart. You have a lot to learn." He sat on the chair as she sorted through her workshop drawers. "I need to go shopping," she mumbled to herself.

"Question."

"Fire away."

"When you saw me, you recognized me as Bucky Barnes, not just the Winter Soldier. How?"

"I… may have hacked into Steve Rogers' personal files a little bit."

"Why?"

"He's hot. There might have been shirtless photos on his phone." She chuckled at her own joke, since he wasn't going to. "No, I tapped all the Avengers' private networks after SHIELD collapsed, to see if they had anything on me."

"Were there?"

"Not one," she sighed, "instead, I got a bunch of angsty texts between him and another guy about you. They weren't explicitly stating anything, but I can put two and two together. Besides, Bucky Barnes is pretty damn famous. Ya look as if you've been through hell, but it's not impossible to see the old war hero in that pretty face a'yours." The plating on his arm slid open, and she resisted the urge to gag at the state of its inner workings. "Okay, so I can scoop out most of this today and then I'll go out and buy the stuff I need to clean it up properly, then I can sort out the hardware. Pass me the spatula looking thing, will you? And the pot."

His arm muscles rolled beneath his skin as he handed them over to her. "How easy are they to buy?"

"Pretty easy, if you're as rich." She pulled a face at the squelching noise the gunk made when she poked it. "And I'm an heiress. I could order it online, but it'd take longer to get here and besides, I need a reason to go outside to stop me getting rickets. You can go out whenever, by the way. To continue your enlightenment."

He watched her work. "I wasn't planning on asking your permission anyway."

"Again," she said, " _manners_. This is my house- well, apartment. And I know you're experiencing freedom for the first time, like a teenager out after curfew, but it would be nice if you told me some stuff. Deal?"

"No."

"You're unbelievable," she told him, dumping a lump of goo on a tray, "you're lucky that you're hot, or there would be no reason in having you around."

"Thanks," he said wryly, and she sniggered.

 **A/N so because this is unavoidably quite slow-moving, I'm going to try and remember to update twice as often as I have been doing. Also, I've started a Loki/OC fic called Of Mice and Mischief Makers (which you'll know about if you read Coffee Run) if you're interested in that well-cheekboned maniac.**


	7. Act I Chapter VI

CHAPTER VI

She sat in front of her bedroom mirror, painstakingly applying electric blue eyeliner. Barnes leant on the doorframe and watched her. His head was tilted so it rested against the wall, hair hanging forward over his face, and his still-lifeless eyes were fixated upon her like she was about to pull a gun out on him.

"Your behaviour," she said, "is just a little bit creepy, y'know that?"

"I wasn't made to respect boundaries," he replied, "but if you want me to stop-"

"No, I'm done anyways." She stood up, tied her hair back from her face with a red polka dot bandana, and realized something. "Heh. This is the first time you've seen me dressed. Not normally how acquaintances happen."

He shrugged one shoulder, as if to indicate he wouldn't know what was normal.

"Ugh. I hate shopping." She grabbed her bag and brushed past him. "You going out too?"

"I won't be in when you get back."

"Okay." She paused at her front door, tapping away at the screen to one side of it that connected to her security system. "It'll let you in, you don't need a key."

"I didn't need one last time. You shouldn't leave your windows open."

"I'm on the top floor, though," she pointed out, "of a sheer building."

"Didn't stop me."

"Funny enough," she said, "super soldiers breaking in isn't a situation I thought I'd need to prepare for."

She went to the top-end hardware store, was told they didn't have the kit she needed, flashed her wallet and had the stuff brought to her within seconds. Then she went down the road and bought some more men's clothes, since having him walking around in her ex's stuff was pretty weird. Coming out of the store, she could see the skeletal building that housed her penthouse dominating the horizon, and not for the first time gave silent thanks for the tinted windows.

It was not only SHIELD who had tried to recruit her before. HYDRA had come- or at least, people she knew to be HYDRA after a couple hours of extensive data mining. She had turned them down, of course, but unlike SHIELD they did not seem to get the message. Fortunately, she moved around a lot, which made her difficult to track- that, and she left a trail of false breadcrumbs which meant that the world and all its heroes and villains thought she was in Berlin.

Barnes was right; her apartment was empty when she got back. She welcomed the silence, dumping her purchases on a table and hopping towards her thought room, kicking off her shoes as she went.

Barnes hadn't asked about the plain white room, and she hadn't told him about it either. Upon her entrance, the tiny projectors in each corner lit up, and shimmered into life around her. Lines of binary quickly manifested themselves into a more easily readable form.

The idea of holograms that, although intangible, she could touch was something that she had shamelessly stolen from Tony Stark- or had he stolen it from her? Either way, Stark had used it to make the air in his home his touchscreen computer screen, which was where the two systems differed. In her thought room, Alvie was inside the computer- not quite one with it, not yet, but pretty damn close.

Once she had got her bearings, she switched back to pure coding- easier to manipulate that way, without the aesthetic distractions. Once she had booked a flight from Berlin to Seoul, she held her hand palm-downwards out in front of her and clenched her fist- the holograms reset.

 _Right_ , she thought, _James Buchanan Barnes…_

The two electrodes she had attached behind her ears earlier picked up the thought of the name and carried it out into the room, her programming transforming it from abstract neurons flaring- an idea she had first made tech in AIM- and into a language that the computer in the walls could understand. She didn't need the hand gestures in here, except for simple commands like refresh, quit and so on- her mind raced through the internet, dancing around firewalls until she found scans of the soldier's files and switched from code to images.

"Cocky looking bastard," she murmured. "Pretty, though." For proper work, for hacking and research and creating herself, the thought room was always preferable to her laptops and desktop computer. It was less restricted, easier for her to move in- what moved her from simply being gifted, to being second on HYDRA's list. If they knew how she did it, the tech she had created, she would have been first, and she was so proud it was a miracle they didn't already.

The lines of binary reasserted themselves into grainy war footage of two men- one instantly recognizable as Captain America, but it took her a while to link the other laughing guy to the man who had taken up residence in her apartment. He was so _young_ \- he looked about her age, hair short and swept back from his face. She checked the date- he had "died" less than six months after the footage had been taken.

Next- _The Winter Soldier_ , she thought, clearing thoughts of Bucky from her head. It took her a conscious effort this time, in order to break down HYDRA's defences without being noticed. She found files on genetic enhancements, cryonic preservation, memory wipes, snipers, combative training… and then there were the lists of targets, page upon page, each name marked with a neat red line.

She had known he was an assassin, known the basics. But this… the devil was in the detail, as always. What kind of person could kill so many people, and see it just like working through a list?

She clapped, and the holograms faded to nothing. At first she thought she was scared of him, but then she realized that the finger on the trigger was that of HYDRA's. The people who had been cold-calling her for years, who she had brushed off like she did SHIELD.

For the first time, she became aware of how close to death she really was.

The slam of her front door jerked her out of her reverie, and she walked out to see a scowling Barnes pulling down the hood of his jacket.

"Any luck?" she asked him, nibbling on her nails.

"Yeah, I went to see the Avengers and they welcomed me back with open arms," he replied, his eyes settled about waist height behind her, which happened a lot- she suspected he had trouble focusing. _Maybe_ , the small, isolated, _calm_ part of her thought, _maybe hasn't been in enough normal conversations to know where to look. I mean, he's looking at pockets, right? Where someone would hide their weapons._

"Speaking of arms - I can do some now, if you want. Take your sleeves off." She hadn't been planning on it, but she needed distracting. Barnes, or at least those who had made him, was the thing that had made her want to run, get the hell out of the US, but ironically it was him she had to stay for.

She grabbed her welding goggles and pulled them down over her eyes as Bucky removed his jacket and long-sleeved shirt, leaving him semi-naked again. Good. Another thing to keep her mind off it. She rolled up her own sleeves and plugged a tiny blowtorch into a nearby socket, then took another couple of lethal-looking instruments from her shopping bags. "I bought you more clothes," she said, opening up his arm.

There was an expectant pause. "Thanks," said Bucky, eventually.

"You are very welcome. Nice to see your manners developing." She glanced up from his arm at the bruises just beginning to blossom across his torso. "You get into a fight?" she asked.

"They got into one with me."

"Oh, good. There were more than one." She switched on the blowtorch. "Am I gonna get stabbed in my bed now?"

"No."

She opened her mouth to ask for more details, then decided that probably wasn't a very good idea. "But apart from that, did you have a nice day?"

He gave her a shadow of a smile, more like he was amused by the question than cheered up by her concern for his happiness. "I don't know."

She laid down her tools and chewed her lip. "Can I ask you something?" she asked.

"What?"

"Y'know HYDRA?"

"Stupid question."

"No, I- I told them to leave me alone, in no uncertain terms. They've been tracking me ever since, I thought I'd led them somewhere else but then you found me and-"

"It wasn't because of HYDRA's algorithm that I found you. I tracked you myself."

She relaxed a little, settling her tools to one side and closing his arm- her hands were shaking too much to continue. "That's better, but- what if they do find me?" she met his gaze. "Are they gonna kill me?"

"Undoubtedly," he said. "Unless they think they can coerce you."

"Coerce-"

"Bribery. Blackmail. Torture. Most likely that one, since they appear to have already tried the first and you don't have anyone they can use against you-"

She pushed back from his arm and staggered away, pressing a hand to her mouth. "Oh, hell. Oh my shit, I'm gonna die."

"Alvie," he said, standing up. "Calm down."

"I will not freaking calm down!" she wailed. "I've given myself a death sentence!"

He grabbed her arm and held her steady, fingers digging into her flesh. "Not while I'm around," he said firmly. "I need a tinker to fix my arm, and until that's done the only way they're getting to you is through me. Okay?"

"Bucky."

" _What?_ "

"You're hurting me."

He released her arm and she rubbed it, wincing. "You mean it? You won't let them kill me?"

"Consider it payment," he said.

She thought of when his arm was fixed, and she would be isolated again. Perhaps if she only pretended to-

 _No. That's wrong._

 _But if it kept me alive-_

 _He'd figure out after a while, anyways._

"Thank you," she said. He nodded in response. "But…"

"What?" she asked.

"You're scared of them. I get that. But why aren't you scared of me? I'm a killer."

"You've asked that before," she reminded him.

"And you didn't answer."

She scowled. "That you're a killer, it- it doesn't freak me out," she replied. "I mean… logically I should be a bit worried, at least. And I remember that, sometimes. But the fact you're up to your elbows in blood?" she shook her head. "Don't bother me."

"Why not?"

 _Because I would be hypocritical if it did._ "None of your business, Bucky."

"Don't," he said, "don't call me… _that_."

"Well, James is boring," she said, "and I sure as hell ain't calling you _Buchanan_."

His working hand clenched into a fist and relaxed again a few times, and she sighed.

"It's just a name, sweetheart. Lotsa people in the world called Bucky, doesn't mean you have to throw a fit every time you hear it."

"It's not my name," he persisted, voice soft.

"Then I'm making it yours. Just Bucky, okay? No Barnes, no Winter Soldier. Just Bucky. If only to make my life easier."

Bucky said nothing, but merely broke eye contact and walked away.

 _So does that count as making progress?_

 **A/N thank the lord for reviewers who point out embarassing typos.**


	8. Act I Chapter VII

**CHAPTER VII**

"Well, that's ya done for today," she said, "I need to let it cool and besides, my brain is frazzled. I'm gonna have to play so much Leonard Cohen to calm down."

Bucky gave her a Look.

"His voice is like Ovaltine. Meanwhile, Bowie is the equivalent of heroin." Instead of removing her hands from his open arm they drifted upwards, to a small cylindrical instrument at the bottom of where his real arm finished. She had seen many things similar to it before, although usually on a much larger scale.

 _Is that what I think it is?_ she thought, eyes widening.

 _If it is, get it out of him and make a damn copy._

With expert, albeit impatient, fingers, she yanked out the cylinder and Bucky winced. "What the hell?"

"I need to looka' this," she said, scraping the dried blood off with her thumbnail, "this is what converts your body energy into what powers your arm, and it must be _massively_ efficient compared to the technology I've been trying to use."

"So what? Put it back."

"Nope. I've been looking for something like this to help power my own stuff." She scrambled over him in the chair, ran to a drawer and pulled out a similar-looking object before running back to show him. "See? They're both converters, but even though _this_ -" she waved her own one "-is probably one of the most efficient in the world it still wastes massive amounts of power, like-" she tried and failed to make a Sankey diagram with her fingers. "Anyways, yours is… _fascinating_. It looks like they mixed some kind of insulator into the alloy to prevent waste heat energy, see? Wow!"

"Put it back in my damn arm," he said again, snatching for it.

She jerked out of the way. "No!" When he tried to grab it again, she went to jump back over him to his inert side, but his good hand grabbed her shirt and held her still- which happened to be as she was straddling him.

"Awkward," she said.

Using her shirt, he pulled her a little closer to him. "Give it _back_ , Kennings."

"This is how most pornos start, y'know."

" _Now_!"

"Fine." She dropped the converter onto his chest. "Go on, then. Put it back."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Very funny."

"What?" she blinked innocently at him. "Put it in your arm."

"No."

"Why not, Barnes?" she said in a singsong voice.

He gritted his teeth. "Because I don't know how."

"Sorry? Didn't quite catch that," she said.

"Because I don't know how!" he said again, practically yelling.

She nodded, satisfied. "You _need_ me, Bucky. Ya have to let me look a'this, because it's that or stay broken."

"I don't like it when people steal parts of me," he growled.

"I only took your converter," she said, taking it back off his chest. "Or did I steal your heart as well?"

"Last warning, Kennings. I can still hurt you."

"I already got that memo," she told him. "Should I stop sitting on you now?"

"Only if you want to," he replied testily, and she grinned.

"Today is not the day I get off with you, Bucky Barnes," she joked, sliding off of him.

%

Alvie swanned around the kitchen, humming tunelessly under her breath as she added ingredients to the pot on the stove without measuring or, seemingly, thinking. Bucky emerged from the bathroom- once he had learnt how to use the shower, he was in it constantly- and leant forward over the breakfast bar.

"You cook?" he asked, a rare trace of curiosity in his voice.

"Only what my mamie taught me. She was from New Orleans, so it's mainly jambalaya, gumbo, stuff like that. I also make a mean mufuletta."

"Never heard of them," he said.

"Oh, Bucky, you haven't _lived_."

He shrugged. "Your grandmother's dead, right?"

"Yeah, a year before my parents." She stirred the gumbo. "I practically lived with her before then, thank gawd, my mom and dad weren't exactly the loving family type. She was wonderful though, was _mamie_. She was pure Creole, she worked in a hotel and could speak French and Italian as good as she could English. She said to me, if you say their words well enough, people'll let you in anywhere."

"How many languages do you speak?"

"Uh…" she had never actually counted. "I can't actually write in any of them except English and French which are both natural for me, and even then not particularly good- but that's just 'cause I'm dumb. But… Louisiana , Italian, Russian, Mandarin and a bit of Japanese and Igbo. But only speaking, though. I'll go onto Rosetta Stone if I'm bored and computers are pissing me off."

"You don't have much of a New Orleans accent," he said, as she dished up the gumbo onto rice.

"No, my parents starting beating it out of me two weeks after she died," she explained, handing him a plate. "How many languages do _you_ speak?"

"Dunno. Sometimes I understand people, sometimes I don't."

"That's funny. I guess that the lingo itself didn't get wiped whenever they messed with your brain, but the factual knowledge of which language is which did. You're a psychiatrist's dream case study, ya know that?" She watched him closely as he began to eat. "Well? D'ya like it?"

He shrugged again.

"First person I ever cook for in my entire life and all you do is shrug," she grumbled. "Ungrateful asshole."

He half-smiled. "It's good food. Is that better?"

"Marginally," she replied, sitting down opposite him.

"You looked different when you cooked. Like you do when you're working on my arm, too."

"How?" she asked, preparing to be offended.

"Whenever you do either of them you always look different to normal, but… it's the same kind of different."

Alvie blushed a little. She was used to compliments and generally agreed with them, but this wasn't like that. It wasn't some chick saying she had a nice rack, it was - hell, she didn't know what it was. But it felt important, coming from _him._ "What kind of different?"

"Like…" he struggled to find a word. "Focused. You normally act so... scattered, except for those times."

"Figures," she said, "they're the only two things able to occupy my entire brain completely. _At least, they were before you turned up. Do you have any idea how distracting you are, Bucky Barnes?_ "How's life in casa Kennings treating ya?"

"I'm not getting shot at," he said, "which is nice."

"You really are crap at compliments," she told him, jabbing her spoon in his direction. "You should be glad I'm such a patient and kind person."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Please tell me you're being sarcastic."

She winked at him, before walking to her fridge and returning with two beer bottles. "I may be an asshole," she said.

"But?"

"But nothing."

Bucky laughed. Alvie had done a lot of impressive things in her life, but she had never been more proud than when she first made him laugh.


	9. Act I Chapter VIII

**CHAPTER VIII**

Alvie was getting nowhere with her designs in her thought room, so while Bucky was out she pushed all the furniture to the edges of her open plan living area, rummaged through her cupboards until she found a pack of chalk sticks and began to write, scribbling formulae and measurements and designs over her varnished floorboards. This sort of thing happened every couple of months, usually when she hit a brick wall; seeing everything tangibly laid out helped her to think.

She mumbled things to herself as she worked, often things that had no bearing to what she was writing- while the chalk marks were all to do with her own project, since being reminded of JARVIS she had been doing some recreational research on AI developments. Her own knowledge of them apart from Stark's butler was based on fictional concepts, so she was going through what she already knew to triple-check, once again, that she had been right and Stark had been wrong.

"Get the god damn imprint off of someone who wasn't a humungous jerk and maybe the AI fragments wouldn't have gone murderous," she muttered, then looked up as the door opened. "Good morning."

"Afternoon," Bucky corrected her, eyes sweeping around the mess of the apartment. "What are you doing?"

"Brainstorming. I think I might be done now, anyways." She pulled her out her phone, which had been tucked into the strap of her bra, hopped across the floor on the few blanks spaces to the kitchen side, scrambled up onto it and took a picture of all her notes. "And, now I just have to mop all this up. Joy."

"Why'd you -" Bucky began, then hesitated. "Never mind."

She directed him to sit in the kitchen before grabbing a mop and a bucket full of soapy water. He watched her as she worked her way around the room in a gradually diminishing spiral, humming something that didn't even vaguely resemble a tune as she went.

"You are a very strange person," he observed.

"That's not how the psychiatrists put it," she told him, pausing in her work.

"How did they put it?"

"Since when were you so nosy?" she asked testily, dipping the mop into the bucket. "And for the record, I never stayed long enough to be diagnosed. Soon as they confirmed I wasn't schizophrenic, I figured there was no point in staying."

"Why would you assume you were?"

"My dad was," she said, squelching around in her socks sodden with chalky water. "Really didn't want to follow in his footsteps."

"Why not?"

"Seriously dude, what's with the probing?"

"I… I'm used to having to get information out of people. Sorry."

"At least you apologized," she shrugged. "You should be sorry you're stuck here with me at all, instead of a normal engineer."

"I don't mind," he said, "if I went with normal, I probably would've been arrested by now."

"Fair enough." She twisted the broom handle in her hands. "D'you really think I'm strange?"

He nodded. "Not dangerous, but…"

"Gee, Mr Barnes," she pouted, "ya do know how to make a girl feel special."

"I still like you," he replied, "which puts you in a category of one."

"What about Captain Capitalism?" she asked, raising a dubious eyebrow.

"I don't even _know_ him, whatever he says. Maybe I did, once, but I can't remember. You, however, would be very difficult to forget."

"Just keep the compliments coming, Bucky, you're making me feel real great right now."

"What more d'you want? I don't have to like you, I only have to tolerate y- are you laughing at me?"

"No," she said, attempting to straighten her grin. "Bucky, it's _fine_. I'm flattered that you don't even want to kill me." She walked forward, patted his knee with a soapy hand. "I know I'm weird." _More than you know, Bucky Barnes. More than even you could guess._ "And now, I'm gonna teach you how to cook."

"No, you're not," he said immediately.

"Yeah," she said, "I am. Because you don't pay rent, James Buchanan Barnes, and so I expect to have my graciousness towards you repaid in cooked breakfasts."

"I've only got one arm," he reminded her.

"Stop making excuses. Bucky Barnes, the right hand man of the star spangled man with a plan, is not going to be bested by a frying pan." _That took a lot of concentration to say._ "No arguing."

He glared at her, but followed her into the kitchen area nonetheless.

"See this?" she told him, pointing. "We call this an _oven_."

"Al, I swear to fucking-"

"Kidding! I was kidding!"

She was making Cajun chicken pasta that night, so set him chopping up stuff while she cooked.

"I saw someone shot in a kitchen," said Bucky in a neutral tone, sat on the counter and using his knee to stop the tomato sliding around as he chopped it.

"That's… nice. And I would've assumed you'd seen a lot of people shot," she replied. _At least he's making conversation._

"I mean, I didn't shoot her. And she was a civilian, too," he said, pushing his hair back from his face for the twenty-seventh time. "Wrong place wrong time."

Alvie pulled a hairband off her wrist and walked up to him. _He seems bothered about it, too. I reckon this guy might be two steps closer to human._ "Who did shoot her?" she asked, "and hold still."

"Pierce. Try to tie my hair back and I break your neck."

"The HYDRA-slash-SHIELD guy?" she said, backing away and returning the band to her wrist.

"Yeah."

"What a dick," she said, and the corner of Bucky's lip twitched.

"You have no idea. Thanks, by the way."

"What for?"

"Earlier, when you talked about me as Bucky and not me."

"You _are_ Bucky," she told him, "not the Winter Soldier, not anymore. You stopped being him when you saved Steve Rogers' life."

His head shot up. "How did you know about that?" he asked sharply, all traces of relaxation gone from his voice and posture.

 _Uh oh._ "Hacked his cell, remember?" she said, backing away from the assassin and his stormy expression.

Bucky stabbed the knife into the chopping board and left it there to quiver. "Right," he said, "I'm going out."

"Bucky, wait, I didn't-" the door slammed behind him, and Alvie swore. "You coulda least stayed for dinner."

However, she had only just turned back to the stove when the door was flung open again.

"You'll wear the hinges out if you're not careful," she said.

"How long've you known?" he asked fiercely.

"Since you first turned up. Why are you overreacting so much?"

"Because it's none of your damn business!"

"Everything's my business," she said, as calmly as she could manage. "I'm a hacker. I'm guessing you saving his life is a bit of a touchy subject."

He glared at her, and she took the knife out of the chopping board, out of his reach. _Just a precaution_ , she thought; she wasn't scared of him, but she didn't much want a stab wound, either.

"Wanna talk about it?" she asked him. "All the therapists say it's good to talk about it."

"Well you would know a lot about therapists, wouldn't you?"

She rolled the knife handle in her fingers as her cheeks flushed. "That was mean," she told him, "I just want to help you, Bucky."

"Don't call me that! I'm not him, I'm not- I'm a fucking _monster_ , Alvie, pulling him out of the water was just a fucking mistake and now look at me, I'm hiding from him and HYDRA both and it was a stupid damn idea, I tried to be someone I'm not, some _thing_ I'm not."

She set the knife down on the side behind her, took the pot off the boil and sat on the counter so that she was at eye-level with him. " _Cherié_ ," she said, taking his odd shoulders in her hands, "it really isn't that complicated. When they found Bucky, they didn't take out his brain and replace it with a machine, they didn't just leave him in a ravine to die and make a robot to do their dirty work instead, they took Bucky Barnes and they gave him a new arm and wiped his memories so he wouldn't fight back. But that didn't make him any less of who he was- you are not your memories, Bucky, you are flesh and blood and scars, and no creepy cult is gonna take that away from you."

His jaw was clenched along with his working fist, but something in his eyes softened. "They weren't a cult."

"Debatable." She smiled at him and squeezed his shoulders. "We're going to finish cooking dinner, and then watch crappy reality television, and then I'm gonna figure out what to do next with your arm while you sleep, 'kay?"

She expected him to argue, to ignore what she had said; Alvie had never told people what to do and he seemed averse to taking orders now, after what had happened to him. But he just nodded, pulled her arms gently off of him and walked round into the kitchen.

 _You are a curiosity, Bucky Barnes. You and me both._

 _I should tell him. Not_ that _, but the other thing._

"I, um," she said. "I have a confession to make."

He looked at her, waiting for her to continue.

"When I said I turned SHIELD down I, uh, I may have been lying slightly," she elaborated, "it was actually kind of the other way round."

Bucky cocked his head to one side. "What're you saying?"

"Not that I sought them out and they told me no straight away!" she said hastily. "They found me and everything was going great, and just before you start training they do a psych assessment of you, to make sure you don't throw a crazy in the field. And I failed it," she added, somewhat unnecessarily.

"How?"

"I… don't know," she admitted. "Like I told you before- I asked if I was schizophrenic, they said no. Then I told them to stick their job up the proverbial, walked out and erased all the data they had on me from their records. I'm _not_ mad," she said defensively. "They were wrong, I'm not. I- I'm not gonna work with people who make mistakes like that about a person's head, their, their _person_. So here I am," she finished, "here we are. Two rejects, cooking Cajun pasta."

Bucky gave her a funny look, then held out his hand. "Gimme."

"What?"

"The hairband, idiot."

"Oh." With slightly shaking fingers, she handed it to him and he tied his hair back with a resigned expression. "I feel like there was more to that gesture than meets the eye."

"I'll leave that for you to decide," he said, not looking at her as he dropped the pot back onto the boil. "What do I do now?"

"Just... let it sit for a while. Bucky, why - why d'you like me?"

"You're not threatening," he answered, "and you're not what I'm used to. It's not that big a deal."

But it _was -_ he liked her. Someone in the world actually enjoyed her presence, and it made Alvie feel quite upset to think about it. _I'm not threatening. I'm not what he's used to. He likes me. It's not that big a deal. He likes me. I have a friend._ She felt her eyes prickling, and wiped them hastily before he noticed anything. "Here," she said, "I'll show you what to do. You're good with knives, right?" she asked.

He gave her a look and half a smirk. "What d'you think?" he said, and she giggled.


	10. Act I Chapter IX

CHAPTER IX

As per their So-Long-As-The-Arm-Is-Being-Fixed-Alvie-Gets-Protection agreement, or the SLATIBFAGP Pact as Al liked to call it, the next time she had to go shopping she gained her own reluctant bodyguard. Bucky didn't particularly want to go shopping and Alvie didn't particularly want an escort, but since it was their own agreement, and since they both needed her alive, neither was much in a position to complain.

First thing she bought was a cheap twenty-dollar phone for him, and ordered him to keep his distance.

"You sure?" he asked, hood up and hat pulled low over his eyes.

"Positive. I'll call you if I need someone to carry my bags," she grinned, and he scowled. "Have fun."

She bought some more solder and wiring from the hardware shop, and was just leaving when she saw the two men in suits, walking in opposite directions to each other with their jackets open and hands free.

 _Uh oh_ , she thought, and as she veered off down another hallway in the mall the man closest to her touched a finger to his ear, and the one furthest away changed direction.

She pulled her own phone out of her bag and dialled the newly entered number. "Don't panic," she said, "I'm being followed."

"Last time I checked you were in the main avenue. Where are you now?" Bucky asked, voice calm and level. _Of course he's not gonna panic, moron, he's the Winter freakin' Soldier_.

"East Hall, about twenty metres in."

"I'm ten minutes away, five if I get noticed. How many?" he asked her.

"Two, at least, although there's probably a couple more swanning about. No idea who they work for, but I don't much wanna find out. Don't hurry, it's not worth you getting into the crap too."

"How close are you to the entrance we didn't come in through?"

"It's at the other side of the mall," she confessed, "but this has happened to me before." She glanced to one side; an expensive clothes store was to her left, windows filled with manikins wearing fancy clothes and shiny blonde wigs. "I meet you in the car park, you think you can get me home without them noticing? Last time this happened, I had to move."

"So long as you lose them," he said, "they'll be watching all the exits separately, and nobody's tailing me."

"Good," she said, "I'll meet you there then." She was about to hand up when Bucky's voice came through the line once more.

"Al?"

"What?"

"Be careful," he said, and her lip twitched.

"Nice to know you're concerned." She hung up, and pulled up her front camera- over her shoulder, she could just see the grainy image of two men entering the East Hall, and suppressing the scream steadily growing inside her she ducked into the clothing store and grabbed a wig off one of the manikins as she went.

She found a beige dress and a matching pair of pumps on her way to the changing rooms, and snatched an oversized pair of sunglasses from a woman's open handbag as she went. She locked the cubicle door behind her, stuffed her own clothes into her bag and pulled on the new ones before tucking her hair beneath the wig. The little toolkit she always kept with her sorted out the security tags, but she dropped a couple hundred dollar bills on the seat in the cubicle next to the empty clothes hanger to sate her conscience and strode confidently out, grabbing one of the store's paper shopping bags from a pile and dropping her own into it.

She adjusted her posture a little as she left the shop, making it more poised and rigid, her footsteps lighter and her movements more controlled, elegance and posture replacing the usual sway of her hips she had picked up from her grandmother. There was a loud group of young women passing by; she walked two steps ahead of them and paused when they did, twirling a few strands of fake hair around her finger as she went. She jumped from group to group, never staying long, and leap-frogged her way across the mall until she was almost at the car park and a man in a suit's eyes slid over her without taking her in.

As soon as she was out of the main shopping area she ran, pulling her phone back out. "I'm nearly there," she panted.

"I know, slow down. I actually managed to lose you for a minute," he added, and as she turned a corner she saw him leaning against a pillar with his phone held to his ear. "Not bad."

She turned off her phone and approached him, and to her surprise he pulled her close, good arm around her waist. "Thanks. Um, what're you-"

"Try to look less freaked out," he said quietly, "I hotwired a car. Pretend you're my girlfriend."

She opened her mouth for a witty retort, but all that came out was a kind of whimper. The car turned out to be a black Chevy, old but well-kept and highly unlikely to attract attention even with its engine rumbling and driver side door open.

"I'll drive. We'll ditch the car halfway and walk the rest."

She nodded mutely and curled up in the passenger seat as they pulled out of the mall parking lot.

"Seatbelt."

"Seriously?" she grumbled, pulling it across her. "You're sure we can get back without them tailing us?"

"Yeah."

"I'll do another false trail when we get back, make them think I've moved on again." She bit down on her knuckles and let out the scream that had been patiently waiting for the last ten minutes.

"Breathe, Al."

"Mmhmm," she said, "I'll be fine in a minute, this normally happens. I repressed it until I was out of sight though, which is good." She pulled off the wig and ran her hands through her dark waves of hair. "The freaking out, I mean. Last time I got tailed was about four months ago, it normally happens about three times a year."

"You move every time?" Bucky asked, and she nodded.

"I have lots of houses up and down the country, I go between those. I wonder who the suits were."

"Probably SHIELD," said Bucky, "HYDRA would've followed you into the shop and shot you in the head there."

"Yeah, but- wait, how did you know I went into the shop?"

"I kept an eye on you," said Bucky, parking the car down a side alley. "I'm good at that."

"But I didn't notice you. I noticed the agents, but not you."

"Nobody ever notices me," he told her, "that's the point." They got out of the car, Bucky wiped the steering wheel with his sleeve to remove the prints and they continued on foot. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Just these shoes are kinda hard to walk in, and I'm on the run. Again."

"You're not on the run," Bucky said, "you're going home. Cut up this fire escape and we're only another couple minutes away."

"Um," said Alvie, "that involves going over a roof."

"And?"

"I am not Batman, unfortunately!"

He offered her his good hand and pulled her up onto the rickety metal stairway. "It's only a short jump," he assured her, not bothering to look back as he dragged her up the side of the building.

" _What_?!" But they were already on the roof, and the skyscraper which housed Al's apartment was looming in front of them. Bucky walked to the edge of the roof and jumped the meter-wide gap onto the next building, a near-identical block of flats. Alvie reached the verge before stopping and shaking her head. "Y'know what? I'll just go find the SHIELDRA agents again. I'd rather face men with guns than possibly fall to my death."

"Shut up and jump, or they'll catch up enough to find our trail."

"I don't do this kinda thing!" she wailed, "I stay outta trouble, Bucky! I can't, I won't-"

"Alvie!"

"What?!"

"I'll catch you," he said, "now take off the shoes and hitch up your skirt so you can move your legs."

"You promise?"

"Sure," he said, "whatever."

"Hnnh," she whimpered. She yanked off the pumps, wincing at the blisters they had already caused, and pulled up the hem of the dress so it barely covered her ass, the cold wind on her bare legs making her tremble even more. "Now what?" she asked.

"Take ten steps back and run."

"But-"

"I swore I would keep you safe, Al. Trust me."

Tears that came to her eyes were blown away by the wind; she walked back, took a deep breath and sprinted at the gap, which any reasonably tall person could have stepped across.

She screamed, flew over it and crashed into Bucky, who grabbed her and staggered a little with the impact.

"I've got you, calm down. You're safe." As it had when he had held her back in the parking lot, his one arm felt hot and alive on her body, as if it were sending waves of electrical current through the skin. "Breathe." She glanced up and gulped at the intensity of his expression; she didn't know it, but it was the same one he wore when keeping his allies from the brink of death when they became injured in combat. It was an expression that didn't give its subject any choice in recovering- in his eyes was an order, an order to get better and get back to work. No concern, just an imperative.

Their eyes locked, hers wide with lingering terror, which made something soften in his gaze, the harsh thin line of his mouth curve a little.

"I've got you," he repeated, much quieter this time. "I've got you…" she pulled herself away, gathering herself together as best she could.

"Best keep moving, right?" she asked him, and he nodded as his face hardened once more. They made it back to her apartment in under five minutes, and Bucky stayed by the only entrance to the building for an hour to make sure they weren't being followed. He came back upstairs to find Alvie wrapped in a blanket in front of the television, with two bottles of beer open in front of her.

"That one's for you," she said, "and I skipped to season eight for you, which is the best one. And I'll let you have half the blanket, if you want it."

He shook his head in regards to that last part, but sat down next to her and took the beer.

 _Thank him, you idiot, or we would be packing right now._

"Thanks," she mumbled, "I know getting yourself involved in someone else's SHIELDRA problems is a completely unnecessary risk."

"We got a deal," Bucky said simply, and stiffened as she leant against him.

"I know," she replied, "but I'm enjoying pretending you care about me." She felt his muscles relax slowly, and smiled to herself.

"So," he said, "season eight."

"Yeah, which is kinda weird 'cuz normally by that point they start running outta ideas…"

She talked through the entire show.

 **A/N I wanted to have parts of this where there were obvious parallels to TWS, and the mall scene was so great I had to do it.**


	11. Act I Chapter X

**CHAPTER X**

Bucky doubted she realized, but much of the time she was not talking to him she mumbled to herself, just quiet enough that he couldn't hear what she was saying and if it was loud, it seemed nonsensical anyway. It had annoyed him at first, but by this point he was just intrigued. He had lived a life of closely guarded secrets and silent thoughts, and this was a girl who mused aloud.

The only time she didn't do so was when she was working on his arm; her expression took on such an intensity it was surprising, especially considering her behaviour the rest of the time. He equated it to his own emotions when sighting along the top of a sniper barrel, when everything was focused on one specific point and he even forgot to breathe. But he had learnt that via training, and orders- he doubted Alvie had ever taken an order in her life. Maybe she didn't have to, since she lived alone. At first, Bucky hadn't trusted her because of the self-imposed isolation, but like with the mumbling now he was just curious. She was an indescribably odd person, and he needed to know why.

"Why don't you talk to anybody?" he asked one day, as she used a pin to gouge along in between two of the wires.

"What?" she looked up at him, blinking owlishly. "I talk to people! I talk to delivery guys, and people in shops, and you."

"You don't have friends," he persisted. Admittedly he didn't either, but then he had an excuse.

She shrugged. "Never wanted 'em. I'm perfectly happy living on my own," she said, giving him a pointed look.

"Fix my arm and I'm gone. It just seemed…"

"Odd?"

"Suspicious."

"Cheers," she muttered, and her bangs fell back over her face as she looked down to his arm again. They hid her restless eyes from him- cat-like, brown eyes so light they were almost yellow. "And I don't do friends. They're… distracting. I'd rather be on my own, so I can work without being interrupted. Learnt _that_ from my last relationship."

He ignored her last point. "Makes my life seem social by comparison. I at least talked to people."

"Yeah, just before you killed 'em. And I talk to myself."

 _She's mad_ , thought Bucky. _Completely mad. Whatever SHIELD thought about her, they were probably right._ "Right." _She's too dangerous to be on the field, near anything like SHIELD or HYDRA. And I want her to look at me again._

"I'm not crazy, okay?" she said defensively. "The fact that I live on my own, and talk to myself, and also that I thought giving hostel to a murderous refugee was an okay thing to do, does _not_ mean that I'm crazy. We've been over this."

"If you say so." He went back to staring straight ahead, because if he looked at her for too long he found himself getting caught up in her pointless conversations. Bucky had been taught to never think of anything that didn't have a point to it, but it seemed Alvie's style was doing pointless things.

But then, just when he had her pegged as another spoilt heiress, she had escaped those HYDRA agents in town (they were HYDRA, he would recognize them anywhere, but he had guessed telling her that wouldn't be a good idea). She was a long way from useless, she was smart and fast, really fast, and he was curious to see what would happen if she was really trapped in a corner.

"I refuse to have my lack of friends mocked by a guy who's spent half his life in a freezer," she pouted.

"Do me a favour and stop bringing that up," he replied tersely, as memories of the crate they had kept him in flooded back, eagerly welcomed by the trigger of her words. The hairs on the back of his neck rose and he clenched his fist.

"Then stop being an asshole to me! It ain't hard, Barnes."

"I can't remember how to," he said hollowly, refusing to look at her. "Sorry about that."

"Oh." She dropped her tools and pulled at her hair, and yet again said something under her breath. He wasn't sure what, but it definitely involved the word "idiot."

"HYDRA's gun never needed to know manners," he continued, for some reason feeling the need to explain himself. He wasn't lying; the way she seemed to want him to talk he had never experienced. Nobody had ever been polite to him, after all.

"Oh, Bucky," she sighed.

"Try not to pity me too much," he told her. Her knuckles were whitening beneath her dark skin she was gripping her hair so tightly, and his own fingers itched to prise them open, stop her causing herself pain out of sympathy for him. There was no _reason_ for it. Why should she have to hurt, just because he had?

She didn't seem the type to be very good at comforting, but she attempted it nonetheless. "You're not their gun anymore, 'kay? You're trying to be Bucky Barnes, and although from what I know he was a cocky son of a bitch, he also knew how to talk to women without making them want to punch him."

"How d'you know that?" he asked, straightening a little. If the girl knew about his past, then she could be more useful to him than just a tinker.

"I've read everything the Howling Commandos ever said about you. I did my research, I'm not gonna let a stranger into my apartment, am I?"

"Can- can I see the files?" he asked, trying and failing to hide the hunger in his voice.

"SHIELD locked me out of the server first time round. But give me a couple of weeks, I can get them back for you." She paused. "This is the part where you say thank you."

The corner of his lips twitched. "Thanks."

"That's more like it."

Again, a couple of pointless words seemed to make her happy. He watched her as she pushed away from the chair and stepped away, studying her meandering walk, the way her shoulders were pushed back, the restless tapping of her fingers against her thighs. At least she wasn't dressed- Bucky didn't need to know about fashion to be put on edge by the eclectic mix of clothes she wore. No, he liked her best when she was just in underwear and a shirt, and not just because it was impossible for her to hide weapons then. There was nothing to distract him from her, watching her to make sure she didn't try to attack him.

Of course, he had ruled out the possibility of that a couple of days after he arrived here. But he watched her nonetheless. She was fascinating in that she was utterly unpredictable- Bucky had always hated unpredictability, since it made dealing with his targets so much harder. But somehow, it worked in her favour and he almost found himself… enjoying it.

He liked looking at her, although he wouldn't admit it. Especially when she wore very little, like now when he could see the marks the wiring of her bra left on her ribs as she ran her fingers beneath the band. As a rule, the only people he saw near-naked was the occasional target he caught off-guard, and himself of course. But she was somehow completely different to that, and he had practically committed the sight of her body to memory, from the curve of her hips beneath her shirt to the bruises that smattered her shins. If he watched for too long, he found himself wondering what she felt like, too, and that was when he pulled his mind away from her. He was a weapon, after all. He wasn't allowed to think like that.

But the fact remained that the thought of her gripping onto him, his fingers slipping beneath the band of her underwear instead made him shiver. He couldn't have her as his weakness, he refused to let that happen… no, he would think like that of any woman, he was sure of it. It was just because she was the only one he ever saw without having to kill or obey orders from. It wasn't her… he could not let her mean something to him. He refused to let it happen.

 **A/N GUUUUYS WE REACHED 100 FOLLOWERS AAAAAAHHH. So tonight you get a double update as a result. Hope you liked the change in pov!**


	12. Act I Chapter XI

**CHAPTER XI**

Alvie was woken up by the unpleasant sensation of being strangled to death.

Last thing she remembered, she had fallen asleep face down on the bed with the tablet containing her notes on Bucky's arm dropped to one side; none of that appeared to have carried over to her current situation.

The first thing she became aware of were the rough, tough fingers squeezing the air out of her neck, the second was that her feet were not on the floor so she couldn't stand to relieve some of the pressure on her windpipe, the third was that her eyeballs seemed to be popping out of her sockets, and the fourth was the cold and remote face of the feared and rumoured Winter Soldier two feet from hers.

She tried to prise her hand away from his neck, but she was too weak to make it budge even a millimetre. Instead, she kicked forwards, braced her foot on his leg and pushed up, so that her neck slid a little and air, precious underrated air, slid back down her throat like the sweetest of nectars.

"Bucky!" she gasped, but then her leg gave way and the full force of his choke returned.

Not for long, though. His name shocked him out of his assassin's poise and his eyes widened as he recognised her, then dropped her to the floor where she lay retching and coughing.

"Oh, god," he said, hand now pushing his hand back from his face in a tell of panic. "I... I'm so sorry, I didn't..." he turned and ran for the door.

Alvie was having none of that. "You stay right here, you son of a bitch!" she rasped, still on her hands and knees. She managed to stop herself trying to throw up, and spoke again, "I'm the only one allowed to run away from my problems in this household." She rolled onto her back and closed her eyes. "Bloody hell."

"I tried to kill you," he said slowly, his breathing almost as laboured as hers. "I woke up and I, I didn't recognise you and I-"

"You're not making things any better by trying to explain yourself," she said, and moaned softly. "Help me up, my legs've stopped working."

She watched his expression through her eyelashes as he pulled her up and sat her on the edge of the bed with one slightly shaking hand. It appeared to be a mix of panic and the last vestiges of calm, although they were disappearing with every second. Panic that he was relapsing back in to what he was trying to escape from, and-

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said, tilting her head back with a finger under her chin and examining the bruises blossoming on her soft brown skin. "I think nothing's broken, but you- you were lucky you spoke when you did, or..."

"Hey," she said, "it's okay."

"It's not! I could've fucking murdered you, Al!"

"You'd find another engineer," she told him.

"That's not the point!" he snapped back, then pursed his lips as he tried to regain some composure. "Don't talk, you'll make it worse. I'll get some ice."

"No," she called weakly after him, and he returned a few seconds later with a glass full of ice cubes.

"Eat one."

You eat one!" she coughed. "Stop worrying about me, it's weird."

"No." He sat back on the floor and buried his face in his hand. "Shit."

Acquiescing, she took an ice cube and stuck it in her mouth. "Duhh fuhh gurruh," she said eloquently.

"Huh?"

She spat the ice back out into her hand. "Don't feel guilty," she repeated, "I know you do, I can see it in your face. It's not your fault HYDRA conditioned you with a fatal panic button." She inhumed the diminished ice again, and swallowed it with difficulty.

"You don't get to tell me what to do," he replied shortly, but she noticed the faint undertone of humour and was grateful for it.

"Aight, James Dean, calm ya tits." She patted his cheek affectionately. "Next time you wake up without a clue where you are, just... check the address before killing everyone in sight, okay?"

He nodded.

"This is the nicest you've ever been to me, y'know."

"Don't expect it to last," he replied, looking at her neck again. "How did you know it was going to work?"

"What?"

"Calling me Bucky."

"I didn't," she admitted, "it was just the first thing that came to mind. You said you wouldn't let me die on your watch, right? And it's not like I've got anyone else to yell out for."

 _Wow, bleeding heart over here._

 _It's true, though. He's all I got._

 _I don't need anyone else._

 _I know, but I'd sure as hell like someone._

Meanwhile, Bucky's expression had turned into one of guilt, despite what she had said. "Hey," she said softly, "you are not one of the bad guys. It's not the gun that's evil."

He stood up. "Don't talk," he ordered her, and strode out of the room.

%

She wore a scarf to hide the bruises, and sang as she worked on his arm. Old songs, ones from the war, and when he didn't recognise them she reverted back to Bowie and old New Orleans lullabies. When she wasn't singing, she chatted non-stop in a hoarse voice about whatever came to mind, which with her meant pretty much everything, and told all her best jokes too.

"Stop trying to cheer me up," Bucky finally said, "it's annoying."

"Normal service has been resumed," she muttered under her breath, and aloud she said "I'm like this all the time."

You're forcing it."

"And you're a miserable sod." She finished the wire that had been stumping her for the last week, pushed the goggles back from her face and cricked her neck with a contented sigh. "Sun's shining, the birds are singing, and we're both, against all odds, still alive. _Cherié_ , be happy."

"No."

"Well, I'll have to be happy for the both of us." She started to sing again, and Bucky's lip twitched as he rolled his eyes. Once she had closed up his arm he stood up, put a hand over her mouth and dragged her into the kitchen.

"If it makes you shut up I'll help you cook," he said, and she nodded. Tentatively, he removed his hand and she smiled at him.

"So that's how to do it," she said, "annoying you into submission."

"Torture and mind wipes work pretty well too."

"We abide by the Geneva Convention in this house, Mr Barnes."


	13. Act I Chapter XII

**CHAPTER XII**

"You're clean," she declared, pushing her goggles back from her face and rubbing her eyes. "Now I just have to rewire you. I can start now, if you want."

"You look exhausted," he replied. "I'm not letting you near me until you've slept."

"What a nice way to put it," she murmured. "Tell me- were you always such a dick, or did HYDRA make you that way?"

"Bit of both," he said with a smirk. It was the fourth time she had ever seen him smile.

"I don't want to sleep," she complained. "I'm wired, and if I fall asleep on purpose then I get nightmares."

"Bully for you," he replied, "my entire fucking life's a nightmare. Bad dreams are like a holiday."

"Language," she said, and yawned. "Say, I actually am kinda tired. I guess the coffee buzz is fading…" She slumped forward onto his arm.

"Hey. Alvie, get off."

"But I'm comfy," she protested, shutting her eyes.

"How is that in any way comfortable?"

"I ain't moving."

"Then neither can I!"

"Uh-huh."

Bucky scowled at her, then stood up awkwardly, wrapped an arm around her waist and walked to her room with her draped over his shoulder. He dropped her unceremoniously on the bed and went to leave.

"That was rude," she called after him. "Also, are you sure you're okay sleeping on the floor?"

"I'm not used to beds," he replied.

"I know, it's just- when you wake up, you make kind of a lot of noise." _Because of the nightmares_ , she added. "Since it's all hard surfaces. You wake _me_ up."

"I'm _so_ sorry," he said, voice dripping with false sincerity.

She gave him a Look. "Just- if you _do_ have nightmares, don't make it hard for yourself. I mean, I'm awake anyways, so come get me."

"What help would you be?" he asked.

"Company," she said. "Just- sleep on the floor in here tonight, okay?"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Why," he said, "you need the company?"

Her lip twitched. "I'm sure I'll wake you if I do."

%

It was her who woke up first; hot and sweating and tangled in her sheets, fleeting images of faceless assassins with forked tongues fading away to nothing in her gloomy bedroom. She kicked off her covers and pressed her feet against the cool floor, then slipped down so she was off the bed completely. Her childhood nightmares of monsters beneath the bed had died a dusty death years ago, when they had stopped scaring her, but she remembered her coping techniques- sleep somewhere cold, in the bath if she wasn't too scared to leave the room, and tell her reflection about it in the morning. They never seemed to come back after that- she had read somewhere, once, that if you talked about dreams to someone else they never returned, and since she didn't have anyone else her own face in the mirror would have to do.

 _Step one, Kennings._ She leant back, flinched as her back leant against something cold, and then remembered the assassin sprawled on her floor. Her head was throbbing, so she leant her temple against the chilly metal of his arm and felt the tickle of Bucky's breath on the back of her neck. She curled up, steadying her breathing, but her eyes snapped open as she felt Bucky's good arm move over her waist.

"Nightmare, huh?" he whispered. "You were so loud you woke me up."

"Very funny, Barnes." She didn't move, barely _breathed_ as he shifted his weight a little, closer to her. Close enough that she could feel his body heat on her back, and she herself moved so they were actually touching. Something told her that human contact was the best way to calm the thudding inside her chest.

"You sure staying there's a good idea? What if I wake up and think you're not you? Not a safe place to be."

"Too comfy, not budging."

"Do you have any sense of danger?" he asked.

"Nope." But she was a little nervous as she took his good hand, lacing their fingers together. His hand tightened around hers and she relaxed into him, then figured that if this was what not being lonely was like, she should do it more often. "Bucky?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

He squeezed her hand in response, and that was how they fell asleep.

%

Bucky rolled onto his back when he slept, it turned out; when she woke up, his other arm was gone from her waist and he was spread-eagled on the floor, mouth open slightly. Not being the type to waste time by watching people sleep, she sat up and poked him in the side with her foot.

"Wake up, sleeping beauty."

His eyes opened and he jerked upright, then glared at her. "What?"

She stared at him. "Whoa, dude. You just went from 0-100 in like, minus two seconds."

He shrugged. "Probably another side effect of being me." Neither of them seemed willing to mention the hand-holding, and she became embarrassingly aware of how close they were.

"Hmm. Well, I'm going for a shower." She stood up, stretched, then vaulted her bed for the en suite on the other side and the needlessly fancy shower it contained. It had cost half a fortune, but she easily had that to spare. She may have had a dysfunctional relationship with her parents, but at least it was made up for by the contents of their wills. And she deserved a nice shower, anyway.

Sometimes Alvie worried that she was narcissistic- it had first occurred to her when working with Stark, who was equally rich and equally aware of it. But even if she was, at least she hadn't called a press conference to reveal her superhero alter ego, not that she had one. She stripped down and turned on the shower, letting it wash away the dried sweat her nightmares had created.

She jumped and turned around as the door opened.

"Alvie, I- oh, shit! Sorry."

"GET THE HELL OUT, BARNES!"

"Sorry!" he backed out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. Scowling, she climbed out of the shower, wrapped a towel around herself and stomped out after him.

"What were you _doing_?!"

"Your phone rang, I wasn't going to answer it!"

"I was in the shower! _Naked_!" she added, in case that wasn't already evident to him.

"I noticed."

"Oi!" she wrapped the towel tighter around herself, and pouted when Bucky began to laugh. "This ain't funny!"

"Sorry," he said again, laughing still harder. He didn't look even vaguely threatening, good hand resting against his side in neither an offensive nor defensive position. She liked it- he looked more like the old footage of the pretty 1940s boy than she had ever seen him, and a few moments later she was smiling too.

"I hate you," she said, leaning forward and whacking him. "Stop it!"

He bit onto his knuckles and stared over her shoulder. "Right. I'm good, I-" and he was off again.

"Unbelievable," she grinned. "Knock next time, will you?"

 **A/N I have nothing to say in this A/N but I feel like I have to do one at this point. So... did everyone have a nice day?**


	14. Act I Chapter XIII

**CHAPTER XIII**

"While I'm making stuff to sort out your arm," she said, "and you're sat here doing sod all, I figured it's time for you to catch up on the decades of culture you've missed." She dumped a pile in front of him. "Ghostbusters- the greatest film of all time, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the greatest book, Ziggy Stardust, the best album, and Red vs Blue, the greatest show ever. Of all time. I like scifi, so this list may be slightly biased, but still." They both stared at the pile. "Yeah, I'm setting you homework."

"I'm not a damn kid, Alvie."

"Look, you can either watch these or stare at the wall or day or go out and get beaten up because you've only got one freaking arm to defend yourself with. I ain't making you do anything, but-"

"Fine, fine, if it makes you shut up. But I'm not putting off… other stuff to do it."

"Just call it your path to self-discovery, Bucky." She checked the notes she had made about his arm, the paper feeling unnatural on her fingers that were so used to holograms. "So I, um, I reckon I can have this done by the end of the week."

He stood up, for once a flicker of emotion in his eyes. "What, really?"

"Really really." She smiled at him. "And then you can run off into the sunset with your star-spangled boyfriend."

He laughed humourlessly. "Not at this rate."

"Well, good luck anyhows. And that means you've only got a week to watch all of that," she added, nodding to the pile. "And there are twelve seasons of RvB, so I'd get started now if I were you."

"Can I borrow your internet?" he asked suddenly.

She resisted the urge to laugh at his funny phrasing of the request. "Sure, why?"

"I want to check something."

"Am I happier not knowing?"

"Probably."

She nodded. "I'll set it up for you, make it easy as possible to operate."

"Also not an idiot."

"If you say so," she replied. "I mean, I did have to show you how to use a shower. And a toaster oven."

He gave her a look, and she grinned back at him until he gave up, rolling his eyes as she scrambled up to grab the nearest device.

With nothing much better to do, she watched him as he worked, face illuminated by the screen with his lips pursed. Without anything else happening to distract her, she realized he was really quite attractive in spite of everything that had happened to him, his outgrown hair hanging forward so that he kept brushing it out of his eyes with his good hand. She found that she was reaching out herself to do it for him, but caught herself at the last minute and returned her hand to her lap. The cuts on his face were nearly healed, and since he was sleeping better he looked less tired, younger- and really quite striking.

 _Oh, no. Fo'sure, I am not attracted to him, no way. He is not hot. My feelings towards him are entirely platonic and intellectual._

 _I wonder…_

 _Nope. Not happening. Stop it._

"Stop staring at me," said Bucky, without looking at her. "It's getting weird."

"You're weird," she muttered defensively, "your _mom's_ weird. Sorry."

The corner of his lip twitched. "It's fine."

"Feel free to stare unblinkingly at me for long periods of time as payback."

"How do you know I haven't already?" he asked, without batting an eyelid.

"Okay, I'm gonna stop this conversation before it gets too creepy," she decided. "And-or sexual."

 _Not that I would mind that, right?_

 _OH MY GOD STOP IT._

"Well, we do sleep together every night," Bucky reminded her, still not looking up.

She blushed. "So for all your ignorance about normal everyday life, you still know a colloquial term for shagging well enough to make a joke about it." They _had_ been sleeping together, although not like that- whenever he woke her up with his nightmares, which was every night, she joined him on her bedroom floor and he seemed to rest a little better. Plus, as much as she had worked so hard for a solitary life, she enjoyed the company.

"Shagging," he repeated slowly, "never heard that one before. Makes you think of farm animals."

"Picked it up off _mamie._ Getting weird again, by the way."

He nodded. "Noted. You got my files yet?"

"Oh, yeah. Hang on- gimme that," she said, gesturing for the laptop. The screen displayed an old newspaper article on the death of Howard and Maria Stark. A car crash.

 _Car crash._

 _Tragic accident._

 _If he was looking at it, I doubt it was an accident._

 _Hitting a little close to home, Kennings?_

She tensed. Shut _up._

 _Guess we have more in common than we thought-_

 _Shut UP SHUT UP SHUT UP_

She minimized the window with slightly trembling fingers, and accessed her hard drive for the files she had regained the previous night. "They're printing now, I figured that would be easier for someone born before the Wall Street Crash."

"What's wrong?" he asked, probably having noticed how she was shaking like a leaf.

"Nothing! Nothing. I'm fine." She closed the laptop.

"Don't try and kid me."

"It's none of your business!" she snapped, shifting away from him.

"It was to do with the Starks, wasn't it?"

"No," she answered, truthfully.

"So it was to do with a car crash."

"N- no." _Don't say anything Kennings don't do it-_

"That's how your parents died, isn't it? A car accident?"

"No- yes!" she stood up, backed off. "I'm going to bed."

"Bull. What the hell is up with you, Alvie?"

Like she was going to tell him. "I said, nothing. Why won't you listen to me, why doesn't anyone ever listen to me?" she bit onto her knuckles. _Don't speak don't talk you're meant to be seen and not heard if they find out they'll take you away they won't let you out you'll be locked in like you were with Mom and Dad in the first place don't speak don't speak DON'T SPEAK-_

"You're a terrible liar." He walked towards her, towering over her slim frame. "Tell me."

"There's nothing to tell! Leave me alone! Why do you want to know, anyways?" she rattled on, trying to deflect his attention.

"I know guilt when I see it."

"Stop projecting onto me!" she burst out, looking around for an escape route.

 _No, not today. He trusts me._

 _This is why I live alone._

 _I don't want him to know what I've done-_

 _But how much longer can I get away with it? Secrets this big always come out._

 _I never could keep my mouth shut._

"Al-"

"Fine! I killed them, I killed my parents!" she blurted out.

The silence that followed was deafening, all-encompassing. To his credit, Bucky's expression didn't even change.

"Tell me what happened," he said flatly. If it had been anyone but him, she would have been surprised at how calm he was. But of course, he was used to murder.

"No."

"There was a reason for it, wasn't there? Tell me."

"I'm not a target, Barnes! You don't need to interrogate me!"

"Right now, all I know is you're a murderer. Make me believe it was justified, Al. I need to trust you."

She ran her hands through her hair and blinked back tears. "I don't want to."

"Too bad." He caught her face in rough fingers and tilted it up to face his, without a trace of affection. "Alvie."

She took a shaky breath. "Fine...

"They were very successful people, a proper power couple, Mom and Dad. Devoted to their companies. And then they had a kid, to complete this perfect picture, but I guess I didn't turn out as they planned. They said I was an inconvenience- that I messed up everything. People always said that they loved me, but how could I believe that when they acted like I was just baggage? People didn't know shit about my life. They loved… _things_ more than me. Their big house, their fancy car, their million dollar companies. I was of no benefit to them, I didn't matter, I was just a drain on resources and they made sure I knew it. I guess you know how it feels to be treated as a… an asset, but what if they just decided you were useless and stuck you in a corner where people wouldn't notice you were defective. It wasn't that they hated me, they just, they- they thought I was unnecessary.

"I just… people said, if something happened then I would realize how much I meant to them. That they would, too. Something big, that made them realize all the material stuff wasn't worth it. And it was always happening on shows and stuff- the careless parents having a life-threatening experience, then they get an epiphany on the real important stuff, and everyone lives happily ever after." She closed her eyes, the long suppressed memory of what she did rising again. The words hurt to say, but it was too late to turn back now.

"So I cut the brakes on their car.

"What kind of sane person does that? How is that a rational thing to do? But I thought… I didn't realize that they were going for a proper drive, I just thought the worst that would happen was a little crash and they would see- but they swerved to avoid somebody, and they were driving along a cliff. The car exploded, so there wasn't enough left of it for the cops to figure out what happened. I was only a kid, they never would have guessed…

"I wanted out, after that. I got the family accountant to sell all my parents' companies, sacked him and put the money in savings. I did my _fichu_ best to stay neutral, 'cause I thought, if I pick a side, get involved in a war, it might happen again. I'm a murderer, Bucky. At least you never chose to do what you did."

"That's why you were never scared of me."

"I'm as bad as you are," she said hoarsely. "You are the only person I've ever let near me because of it." She felt drained, more exhausted than she had ever been. "Coupla' murderers, sharing an apartment. So do you trust me again? Because I wouldn't."

Bucky pursed his lips as he thought, and Alvie felt like a convict in front of a judge, about to be sentenced. "More than I did before," he replied, and she blinked in surprise. "Stuff about you that didn't make sense earlier does now."

"But… I'm a bad person."

"Pot telling the kettle it's black, kid." His hand had been on her face all that time, but his grip had softened as she talked. "Did you really think you were going to scare _me_ away?"

"Maybe." She raised her own hand to his, and pulled it away from her. "I'm going to bed. You don't have to join me."

She walked away, slammed the bedroom door behind her and sunk onto the floor, shaking with silent sobs. She bit down on her arm to muffle herself and tasted blood, curling into the foetal position on the floor. For over a decade she had devoted her life to trying to forget what she had done- not allowing herself to take a side on either good or evil, selling the companies under her family name, withdrawing from the world- but now all that was gone, she had torn down her old defences and had reminded herself of what she was. A killer.

She fell asleep like that, on her own- but when she woke up the next morning, she could feel the heat of a now familiar body pressed against her back.

"Bucky?" she whispered, staring at the wall.

"Yeah?"

"You awake?"

"No."

She rolled her eyes. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to sleep."

"I got that. But I thought that, after what I said, you wouldn't want… this."

"Obviously," he said, "you're wrong."

"I don't normally like being wrong."

"Al," he said, "I _really_ want to sleep."

"But this time I'll make an exception." She rolled over and curled around him, her arm creeping over his back until she found his hand. "Bucky?"

" _What_?"

"Do you have nightmares about them? The people you killed?"

He was silent for a while before answering. "Sometimes," he said eventually, "most they made me forget, but a few of them... stick."

"Like who?" He didn't answer, but she was curious enough to wipe out a whole shelter's worth of cats. "Tell me."

"… The kids."

 **A/N biiig chapter, kind of an important one too- hope I didn't let you down. Alvie has quite different tastes to me, actually, save for Red vs Blue. That show ruined me. It's meant to be a comedy. A comedy! I HAVE NEVER CRIED MORE AT ANYTHING ELSE**


	15. Act I Chapter XIV

**CHAPTER XIV**

"It's funny," Alvie said one morning, dumping six spoonfuls of sugar into her tea, "how you always have to have a mission. I mean, I wonder if HYDRA actually programmed that into you, or if it was just a side effect."

Bucky, who had been out all night doing things she didn't really want to know about, looked up from the coffee machine. "Why're you bringing it up?" he asked her.

"Because it's interesting." The teaspoon _chinked_ around the edges of the china as Alvie stirred her drink. "Sad, but interesting. Like, the first thing you do when you're free from them is set yourself an objective, that is, figuring out who you are, and then you have, like, smaller missions that help you achieve the big one, like get your arm fixed, and put up with me so you can get _that_ one done, et cetera. Must make things simple, thinking like that."

"It's all I know," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone that didn't quite hide the emotion beneath it. "What use am I if I don't have a purpose?"

" _I_ don't have one," she responded, taking aim and throwing the teaspoon across the kitchen area to land in the sink with a clatter. Bucky's eyes followed the movement as it soared in a parabola past him, most likely an ingrained response to any missile that went flying past his head. "My life is just one big mess."

He nearly smiled. "That sounds terrifying."

"Eh, ya get used to it. But don't you get… I dunno, tired? Y' _look_ exhausted, mosta the time."

He turned his mug around in his hand. "Kind of. It's- I didn't sleep, before. They wiped my head and put me in cryo, but the longer I was out of it the more… normal I got. And now it's been months." He paused to steady his breathing. "I can't keep control of myself like I can at the beginnings."

 _Beginnings in plural,_ she thought. "Can you remember all the other times?"

"The longer I'm out, the more I do." He seemed agitated, like he didn't want to talk about it, but Alvie was properly intrigued now. She was by no means a neuroscientist or psychiatrist, but she had been doing her own research into brain patterns and memory ever since he had arrived, and it was fascinating.

"So what _can_ you remember each time? There must be a base line they erase back to, or you'd be useless-"

"Stop!" Two mugs dropped and shattered onto the floor. "You said I wasn't a damn experiment!"

"You're not-"

"Then stop treating me like one!" he yelled, "you're supposed to-" he cut himself off and looked away. "Forget it."

"Supposed to what?" she pressed.

His good hand curled around the side of the counter until his knuckles turned white. "Supposed to help."

 _So it isn't just the missions, then. Everything he thinks, knows is categorised- good and bad, enemy and ally, help and hindrance. Soon as someone breaks that, he freaks out. That's properly fascinating._

 _Now ain't the time, Kennings._

"I'm sorry," she said, "I was a prat. _Am_ a prat."

"No, you're not," he replied.

 _Because I fall into the binary of good guy. Which is wrong, of course._ "Can I make a suggestion? Might help you become more human-y, less of a robot."

"No."

"Every day," she said, "you do one pointless thing. Like, you already watch TV, right? Only when I make you, but still. That's a step, but…" she held out a hand. "Dance with me, Bucky Barnes."

He stared at her outstretched fingers. "Why?"

"There's no reason," she reminded him, "that's the point." A few hand gestures, picked up by her sensors, and her stereo hummed into life. "C'mon, pretty boy. It's practically a crime not to dance to Mama Cass."

"I don't know how," he said, as she started to sway her hips.

"It's easy." She took both his hands, even the broken one, and moved them in time to the music. "See?" she placed his good hand on her waist, and rested hers on his shoulder and eventually, he relaxed and began to move in time with her. "There we go. Isn't this nice?"

"It's better than you singing," he said, and she huffed.

"You're just jealous of my talents."

"So this is how you live," he observed, "one pointless thing after another."

"Between trying to stay alive, yeah." She liked the way he was looking at her; a sort of confused fascination that made her wonder how people could ever be scared of him. Although to be fair, she doubted he looked at many people like that. But he didn't look even remotely dangerous with an expression like that. In fact, there was almost an innocence to him, a man who was having to learn everything again. It was an honor that she got to be a part of that.

"Question," he said.

"Hit me. Not literally hit me, but y'know, figure of-"

"Why are you wearing sunglasses?"

"Because I want to," she said, "obviously."

He laughed. "Obviously," he repeated, and pushed them up onto her forehead.

"Wow," she exclaimed sarcastically, "everything's so bright now." She removed the sunglasses, put them on Bucky and giggled. "You look fabulous."

He took them off and dropped them onto the collar of her shirt, his fingers brushing against the exposed skin of her chest as he did. The contact must have done something to her lungs, because she had stopped breathing. "They suit you better."

"Duh." They were still dancing, but here was very little space between them now; so little that it was almost tangible, like a physical barrier between them.

"I bet I know what you're thinking," she declared, "you're thinking, 'what else counts as pointless, then?'"

"I'm not-"

"Anything, really. Sports. Kissing. Music. Sex. Laughing. Love. Mardi Gras- gah, I miss that. It was this big festival _mamie_ used to take me to see, back in New Orleans. Lotsa dancing and glitter and barely dressed women, e'rry single _Orléanais_ out on the streets, it's _great._ "

"That's… not what I'm thinking about," he smiled. He had a nice smile, Alvie observed for the billionth time; small and narrow, as if he were trying to hide it.

"Really?"

"I promise."

"You're the only person who's ever promised me stuff," she admitted, "it… it's..." _It's you. Why is it only you?_

"You're the only person I've ever promised anything to."

And then all at once the negative space between them vanished, their bodies pressed together save for only a few millimeters between their lips. She could feel his heart beating a tattoo against her ribs and his metal arm was heavy in her hand- she dropped it and rested her arm on his shoulder, crooking her elbow around the back of his neck and closing the gap still further, and his gaze was fixed on her slightly parted mouth -

Her phone bleeped and they leapt apart, avoiding looking each other in the eye.

"I, um," Alvie said, and ran over to the coffee table where it was lying. _Did that just happen? I think that just happened._ It was just a notification that some hardware she had ordered had been shipped out, nothing important at all. "Bucky-"

The front door was slamming shut just as she looked up.

"Dammit."

 **A/N there are several reasons for me posting another chapter so soon. 1) this got a sudden burst in popularity and we passed 150 follows, so this is your reward, 2) update schedules are for squares, 3) stuff's just starting to get exciting and 4) I kind of want to have the first act finished a few months before Civil War comes out, so I have time to write more of this. Also, in the hiatus between acts one and two I want to publish a few of The Civilian Files, which I'll say more about at a later date. But you'll like them, I promise.**


	16. Act I Chapter XV

**CHAPTER XV**

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Alvie asked, attaching the spare pair of electrodes she thought she'd never need behind Bucky's ears and watching him with wide, slightly worried eyes.

"You said it was the easiest way to find out about my past."

"It is. But there's no way to filter what you see," she explained. "I've synced to you, so it'll run on your thoughts instead of mine, but I can still jump in and control it if I need to."

"How do I do it?" he asked, as she held her wrists against each other and twisted. Holograms shimmered into life around them.

"Think of something, and focus on it. It doesn't have to be a word or phrase, it could be anything- a face, melody or whatever. The computer takes your thought and scans the entire internet for anything similar- and I'm not talking just normal internet. Deep web, separate servers, stuff that's been deleted so much that even the CIA couldn't find it- anything that has ever been online in any form, it'll find, and I've programmed it to tailor the results based on your thought processes, composing data while sorting out anything irrelevant from the same pages. It's google, but without the restrictions and a hell of a lot more efficient. It's built on the Tor browser too, so everything's there, even the stuff that's usually hidden."

"So I just… think of my name?"

"And what you already know about yourself. The computer does the rest."

He gave her a funny look. "I know a lot of people who would do bad things to get their hands on tech like this."

"Well, that makes me feel _real_ safe, Barnes," she said, and winked at him. "I'll close my eyes, give you some privacy."

"Thanks." Lights flashed across her eyelids as holograms whirled around the two of them. "Are these the SHIELD files?"

"If that's what you thought of, then yeah."

"How do I get into HYDRA's?"

She opened her eyes. "That'll be… harder. Give me a minute." She placed a hand on his chest, then drew it sharply into her own- control switched to her and she hit HYDRA's firewall. She felt Bucky's eyes on her as she worked around it, disabling their security before pulling up all the files on both Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier. She passed control back to him, her hand lingering on his solid torso, over his heart- she could feel it beating, strong and fast and irregular. "You sure you want to do this?" she asked, closing her eyes again.

"Yeah," he said, his voice catching as he spoke. She felt the rise and fall of his chest become quicker as he read through the files.

"Bucky, this isn't you-"

"Shut up!" he snapped, and swallowed. "No, I didn't mean that."

"It's fine," she said, "talk to me, it helps to think out loud."

"Pierce…"

"Alexander Pierce? He's dead."

"Good."

Using her own electrodes, she opened her eyes and focused a small rectangle of holograms over his shoulder. Warning signs flashed at her. "Bucky, we need to stop."

"Not now!"

"They know we're on their database," she said, "they're tracking the source. I've left red herrings but we need to turn off, _now_."

"You can't!" he said, desperation making his voice break.

"I'm sorry," she said, stepping away and clapping her hands. The holograms died, and Bucky's attention snapped onto her.

"What the fuck did you do that for?" he roared.

"I just told you! Unless you want HYDRA agents turning up at our door, in which case go ahead!" she folded her arms. "But no, being _grateful_ is too much to ask from the poor tortured soul that is James Buchanan Barnes!"

"I don't deserve to be called that name! Did you see the things I've done?"

"Pot telling the kettle it's black, _cherié_! Don't you see? I can't hate you, I can _never_ hate you, you're the only person who gets what it's like to feel the weight of the people you kill on your back! You're the only other messed-up son of a bitch I know! And it is _not your fault!_ "

He glared at her, deadened eyes murderous- but she had seen that expression in her own reflection before, and it held no fear for her.

"You're a gun," she said, "guns aren't evil. The people shooting them are."

He stormed forward, and she instinctively backed away from him as she raised her hands to protected her – _this is it,_ she thought numbly, _this is how I die._ "Bucky, wait! I just wanna –"

His lips crashed into hers, kissing her so hard she thudded into the wall behind her. It was a hot, angry kiss, with days and months and decades of repressed and sedated emotion bursting out through it, and his body pressed so tightly against hers that it felt like they were about to fuse into one broken being. He held her like she was in danger of disappearing into smoke at any moment; he was desperate and clumsy and oh, _oh_ it was amazing.

"Help," she finished, as he broke off. "I just wanna help. Oh, Bucky."

"I'm sorry," he murmured, Alvie feeling each heavy breath as the rise and fall of his chest pressed into her own. "I can't... handle myself the way people do, I'm not used to being able to... think. You deserve better."

"I don't want better," she replied, "I want you. I'm done with being alone."

She was so close she could see the pain in his eyes. "I can't," he said. "I'm sorry."

" _Cherié,_ wait –"

But he was already gone, the front door's slam echoing through her apartment, and Alvie's knees gave way. She sagged to the floor and pressed her fingers to the lips as though that would trap the ghost of the kiss there, and felt a prickling in the corners of her eyes.

 _What are you doing?_ the united voices of her internal dialogue roared at her. _Go after him!_

Alvie staggered to her feet and, not even bothering to put proper clothes on, ran out of the apartment. Bucky used stairs, he always used stairs, but at this penthouse height the elevator was faster – she hammered on the button and collapsed inside, felt the whoosh in her gut as the metal box accelerated downwards, and fell out of it just as he reached the lobby.

"You can't go," she panted.

"But I –"

"It don't matter!" she cut across him, in a voice so strong she surprised even herself. "I haven't finished your arm yet! We got a deal, Barnes. I sure as hell ain't going back on it."

He stared at her, his face a dam barely holding back the tide of emotions she knew he was feeling. "And then… and then I go," he said.

"And then you go." She felt her heart break, but ignored it. She would not let him re-enter the world with a lame arm. "Strictly professional. Just… please, Bucky. Let me fix you first. Let me at least do that."

He looked down at his left side, the lump of metal so close to being perfect again. "Today never happened," he said. "Any of it."

"Fine. Whatever." She turned back towards the elevator. "But don't think for a moment that this changes how we feel."

That thing HYDRA used on him, to wipe his memories and, more importantly, his emotions… right now, she could imagine that was looking pretty appealing to the both of them right now.


	17. Act I Chapter XVI

**CHAPTER XVI**

For the first couple of weeks, when Alvie worked on Bucky's arm he had stared around at the apartment, at her work, or just into the middle distance. But as the days passed he had begun to watch her instead, stealing glances like she was something precious whenever he thought she couldn't see. Like now, for instance, with eyes the color of ice so thick it looked like it went on forever.

"Stop objectifying me," she said without looking up from her soldering iron, and immediately regretted it. Things had been… _tense_ for the last week, ever since he had almost left her. It was clear that they both were feeling something a lot more strongly than they were letting on, and were trying to avoid the truth coming out they were avoiding each other as much as two people sharing the same apartment could. She had avoided sleeping in her bed, since that would have inevitably meant sleeping with him, and well… the meaning of the phrase might have changed. That kiss… Alvie Kennings had kissed a lot of people in her time, but none of them had ever been like that. Even thinking about it now she felt a tingling in various body parts, which she was used to, but there was another sensation in her heart that was unfamiliar, and because it was unfamiliar it was dangerous. She didn't trust herself around him, around this man, the _first_ man, she ever felt like she understood.

She was worried that she might be falling in love with him. And things rarely ended well for the people she loved.

"Okay, I think I'm done." She blew on the solder to cool it and flipped a tiny switch; the titanium panels slid closed smoothly. "Can you feel it?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, clench your fist." Though she had been expecting it, her eyes still widened at how natural the movement was, the seamless technology distracting her from everything else for a moment. "Whoa… flex your elbow… roll your shoulder. You good?"

He stood up, fist clenching and unclenching. "I'm good," he said, staring at his hand.

"That's amazing. _You're_ amazing- I mean- ah, I dunno," she tailed off, a blush creeping up onto her cheeks. How did he do this to her?! _How?!_

He watched her with a steady, unreadable expression. "You're the one who fixed it."

She nodded. "Right," she said, "yeah, yeah, I did… Well, it's two in the morning, so…" she turned and walked away, towards her bedroom.

She didn't notice Bucky behind her until he grabbed the hem of her shirt and pulled her round to face him, both arms encircling her this time- one warm, one cold. She fell backwards onto the bed and he knelt over her, his hair brushing her cheekbones before he leant down to kiss her again, the weight of his body gradually sinking into hers as his good arm, the feeling arm of skin and scar, slid beneath her shirt. The dam had broken. She had, completely and utterly, given herself up to him.

"I guess this means you're staying, then."

"Guess so."

"I still think this is a very bad idea," she said, wrapping her legs around his waist as both of his hands held her steady. _It's because of me he can do that_ , she thought.

"Al," he replied, undoing her bra strap with perfectly functioning metal fingers, "it isn't exactly the worst thing you've done. So break with tradition and shut the hell up."

"Are you sure?" she asked him. "There's no turning back after this."

He stopped completely. "What d'you _think_ I am, Kennings?" he asked. "Fifty fifty?"

"Oh, you ridiculous man. Let's see how much you can remember about _this_ , shall we?"

%

She traced the scar tissue where his metal arm was grafted onto his shoulder; his eyes followed the lazy path of her fingers. "So this is what it took to get you to sleep in a bed," she observed, and he smirked.

"Should have tried it earlier."

She shrugged. "Worked out in the end."

"S'pose it did." His hand, his good hand, rested on the crook of her knee, pulling it over his waist. "Talk to me."

"About what?"

"Something. Everything. Nothing."

She laughed softly. "That might be a little hard."

"Fine. What you were doing before I turned up, then?"

Her fingers ceased their movement. "You know my thought room, that I showed you last week? It's my baby, my life's work. But it's also just a stepping stone to something else, something better."

"Like?"

"The way it works, the neural link is only one way. But what if it was a circular process? A supercomputer detects your thoughts, analyses them, finds results and then feeds them directly back to you, linking them to your original perception without the need for a room full of holograms."

"So… _you_ are the computer."

Her eyes shone in the light of dawn. "That's the plan."

"You might be a little bit insane, Miss Kennings," Bucky said with a smirk.

"I think that's very much a matter of opinion, don't you?"

Her hand moved to almost invisible scarring across his chest; battle wounds, that HYDRA must have healed extremely well. She saw bullet holes, stab wounds and long scars with the dotting of sutures on either side. His body was littered with them, constant reminders of those he had killed. Her own scars were mental rather than physical, and for that she was grateful. Well, except from one on her forehead that she had got when she had walked into a door. But this... he had to look at the ghosts of old battles every day, as much a part of him as that metal arm, or his heart. The amount of inner strength it must take to endure carrying that guilt was unimaginable. He must have hated himself awfully. What could she possibly say to lessen that self-hatred?

"You're pretty and I like you a lot," she whispered.

"I'm not," he said, "and you shouldn't."

"Bit late to be saying that, _cherié._ What are you going to do now?"

"Carry on looking for Bucky Barnes." He still said that name like it belonged to someone else.

"Try not to get yourself killed while doing it, will you? That's all I ask."

"I'll do my best." He grinned at her, a properly human, normal smile, and she kissed him. "Only 'cause you asked so nicely."

She rolled out of the bed and shrugged on his shirt, yawning. It was the same one he had been wearing when he first arrived, and it felt like a shadow of him now, so used was the material to his form. "Follow your dreams, Bucky."

She heard him laugh behind her as he sat up. "You mind if I go out now?"

"Of course not. I mean, I was about to have a shower, but if you don't feel like joining me…"

"I never said that," he said quickly, following her into the bathroom and grabbing her hips. "Hey, Al."

"What?" she asked him, biting down a giggle as he kissed her shoulder.

"You're pretty and I like you a lot."

"Oh," she laughed, "you asshole."


	18. Act I Chapter XVII

**CHAPTER XVII**

Alvie wandered around her apartment while Bucky was out doing whatever it was he did, humming to herself as she tidied her work stuff.

 _Visual perceptions are the easiest way to go rather than full on sensory- just keep audio non-default for if there's actually an audio result. Let's not have it so there's anybody speaking in my ear._

 _It works for Tony Stark._

 _Exactly._

She was happier than she had been in years. Bucky was fixed and, more importantly, staying put; her personal work projects were practically complete; and she had managed to keep up a several month streak of not being found by SHIELDRA -

"Hello, Miss Kennings."

She froze- that was not Bucky's voice, nor any other's she knew. The door had been locked- she glanced in the reflection of the kitchen cabinet in front of her, saw one man in a suit and four others, with machine guns loose around their necks and pistols strapped to their thighs.

"That much firepower for little old me?" she asked, and the suit's eye twitched. He waved a hand, and two of the men walked towards her. Weren't they supposed to have some kind of darkly humorous conversation before they made a move on her? That's what always happened in the movies - they didn't just get the job done like this!

"What the hell are you doing?" she demanded, struggling as they grabbed her arms. "Let go of me-" the butt of a gun cracked into the back of her head, and everything went dark.

%

When Alvie came to, her eyes were taped open and she was tied to a chair in front of the television. Her head was strapped back so she was forced to look at it, and already her eyes were watering at the wavering, multicolored shapes throbbing on the screen.

 _This hurts more than I'd expect it to._

"Who are you?" she demanded, slurring a little. She could feel blood, dried down the back of her neck and caking her hair together, and silver-fast panic started to trickle through her bloodstream.

"You thought you could break into HYDRA's records a second time and we wouldn't notice? I'm sorry to disappoint."

"Oh, _parfait_ ," she muttered, fighting to close her eyes, "I knew that was a bad idea."

"Given that you have not, to our knowledge, done anything with the information you found, we are prepared to be lenient," said the suit, and shifted her chair a little closer to the kaleidoscopic screen. "What were the files you saw?"

 _They don't know? That's something, at least._ The screen made it difficult to think, even. Or perhaps that was the concussion. "I didn't. I just hacked in to see if I could."

He laughed softly. "Don't patronize me."

"It's the truth!" she whimpered. But she had got no better at lying than when she had talked to Bucky.

"Who is currently residing with you here? According to our intelligence, you live alone."

"Seriously?" she said, tears running down her cheeks in an effort to make her eyes hurt less. It didn't work, and a particularly violent throb of color on the screen made her sob and yank at her bonds. "You're torturing me for information about my sex life?" _Oh god make it stop it hurts so much help me please god help me-_

"Stop trying to deflect the question, Alvine. Who is living with you?"

"Me," said a low voice from behind the four guns, and Alvie sagged with relief- or as much as she could in the chair. Bucky ignored the men, walked forward and pulled a flipknife out of his pocket to cut her ties.

"My eyes," she mumbled, and he removed the small strips of tape. She squeezed them shut and collapsed forward as soon as she was free. His hand brushed against the broken skin on the back of her head. "Ow."

"You're okay," he whispered to her, "Al, you hear me? You're okay. What are you?"

"Bucky-"

" _What are you?_ "

It was an old army trick, she guessed, to get soldiers to carry on even when there was no way they could; belief, conviction, could move mountains. "'M okay."

"Good girl." Down at his waist, his hand tightened around the blade and she heard the _chink_ of guns being primed.

"Don't shoot him!" barked the suit. "It's the asset!"

 _"It's the asset"? He really is just a thing to them, isn't he?_

"Soldier," said the suit, "we've missed you. How is life, out of the cold? People are so _charitable,_ aren't they?"

"Go to hell," Bucky snarled.

The HYDRA man raised his hands, but he was smiling. "Is this… _affection,_ soldier? And to think, I thought I would be scared of you. Oh, the stories they told us about the Winter Soldier. The ghost stories. The nightmare fuel. And here you are, cohabiting with some cheap hacker. Come with us now, and we promise, the girl will not be harmed."

"Bit late for that," Alvie pointed out, wincing as a fresh wave of pain crashed against the back of her skull. He took her shoulders and leant her back against the chair.

"Put down the knife or we shoot her."

Bucky grudgingly dropped his weapon and it clattered onto the floorboards.

"And now you're going to come home."

One of the guns edged closer to Bucky. "What if I refuse?" he asked, "you think you can subdue me? You don't even know the trigger words, do you?" He tilted his head to one side and laughed shortly. "This the first time you've ever seen me? You _should_ be scared. You should be running."

The suit smiled in a chillingly reptilian manner. "Why would I be scared of a broken gun?"

Alvie dropped to the ground as gunfire peppered through the apartment, but Bucky was too quick- he grabbed the nozzle of the machine gun and forced it upwards, then wrenched it out of the guy's hand and whacked the side of his head with it, the force looking like it crushed his skull. The two other guns ran towards him- he shot one in the chest with the automatic and as the other guy abandoned his weapon to swing a punch, Bucky grabbed his wrist and crushed it in his metal hand. As it happened, Alvie crawled forward and yanked the pistol out of the first gun's halter, thinking they might need it later.

She scrambled to her feet as the last merc standing swung his arm around and shot wildly, so that the bullet ricocheted and hit her leg.

She screamed and collapsed, hands flying to her leg then jerking them away again as they came into contact with hot, slick blood. The pain was immense and all-encompassing, and although an outsider would have realized the injury wasn't serious it was, for a moment, the only thing that existed to Alvie, and she almost lost herself to the pain. The one thought that dragged her back into the present was that Bucky was still fighting.

The third gun screeched as the bones in his good hand were turned to dust, and Bucky kneed him in the groin, spun his flipknife and stabbed him in the throat, leaving the blade there and dropping the body to the ground. He straightened up and dropped the machine gun, spun round and grabbed the neck of the suit as he tried to run.

"You're god damn right you should be scared of me," he snarled. "The stories were true."

One squeeze and the sounds of vertebrae crushing mingled with the gurgles of the man, and Bucky flung him against the wall like a rag doll. He rolled his neck and unclenched his empty hands, turned- then froze as he saw the revolver the last surviving soldier had trained onto him.

"Very good, soldier," said the HYDRA man, "but it's time to stop playing now, don't you think? Time to go home." One last gunshot rang out around the apartment.

Bucky didn't flinch, but his eyes widened as he saw the blood pouring out of the hole the bullet had made. The little circle in the centre of the agent's forehead dripped red down his nose and he collapsed, falling flat on his face to reveal Alvie leaning on the table behind him with fingers wrapped tightly around the pistol. Bucky, without so much as a graze on his body, stared.

"Oh, gawd," she said, eyes widening at the widening pool of blood on the floor. "I killed him. I did it again." And then collapsed backwards onto the floor.

It was like every molecule in her body was focused on drawing her attention to the inescapable pain in her leg; she felt pinned down by it, unable to move or think or breathe. Now that Bucky was safe, she dropped the gun and curled up, screaming through gritted teeth. He ran over to her and dropped to her side, both hands moving to her bloody thigh.

"It's stuck," he told her, examining the bullet wound. "Be glad it missed an artery." His lip twitched as he remembered something. "On a scale of one to ten, how much does it hurt?"

"Ten," she managed to say, in between the screeching noises she was making. "Not... Funny..."

"You'd say ten for a paper cut," he said, leaving her to go to her toolbox, rummaging through it until he found a pair of tweezers. "Pray these are clean."

Her eyes widened as he approached her, and she shook her head madly. "Leave it in!" She gasped, eyes watering like a thunderstorm, "it's fine!"

"Shut up and bite down on this," said Bucky, grabbing a book from the table and sticking it in her mouth. "Hold still."

Al didn't think the pain could get any worse, but as soon as the tweezers brushed against her wound a fresh wave of explosions ran across her nerves, and she jerked away from him.

"Hold still," he said impatiently, "I've done this before. We need to get it out if we're leaving." One look at her expression told him she wasn't listening, so he pinned her torso down with his right arm and her bad leg with his knee, his metal fingers holding the tweezers perfectly steady.

Screams ripped out of her throat as she thrashed about, the book stopping her from biting off her own tongue, but Bucky had her leg still enough to pull out the bullet without making it worse. It really wasn't a particularly serious wound; a small trickle of blood ran out of the hole, but not a worrying amount, and all he needed to do was tape it together and bandage it tightly as Alvie sobbed.

"I got shot for you, Bucky," she cried when he was done. "Freaking shot. Through the goddamn leg." _Screw that old army technique, I am absolutely not okay, not at all, not even remotely._

"Stand up," he said, ignoring her. "Test your weight on it."

 _He's so calm._

She attempted putting any pressure on that foot, immediately fell over and only tried again because of the glare Bucky gave her. "You have a rubbish bedside manner," she told him, and this time she could rest on that leg despite the pain it created. She grabbed hold of his shoulders and blanched.

"You good?" he asked, steadying her with his hands on her waist.

"I wouldn't stretch that far," she mumbled snottily, tears still pouring down her face. "So you are the Winter effin' Soldier, then? Not Bucky?"

"I can be both," he said shortly, releasing her waist and stepping back half a foot.

"So we run, now?"

He nodded. "I'll carry you if you can't walk."

"Oh," she said, "cheers."

"What is it?"

The thoughts, as always, tumbled out of her mouth without her even noticing it. "It's because of you this happened, Bucky! All of it! The first time in a bloody decade I let someone in, and looka' what happens." She waved a hand around the apartment. "Bodies and bullet holes. You said this wouldn't happen, you said nothing bad would happen!"

"Sorry," he said, "I didn't expect this, but maybe that first time you letting someone in shouldn't have been me."

 _Bull! Who else could it have possibly been but him? It's always him._

 _It's always him._ For once, the voices in her head were agreeing, and the panic that had turned into anger at him died.

She gripped his shoulder tighter- mostly for support, but also for reassurance. "Then what would've happened to you?" She studied his face closely, and wiped a tiny smear of blood from his jaw. "Maybe... Maybe this was worth it."

"Including getting shot?"

"Maybe not getting shot," she admitted, "you're not that good. I'm a bit pissed about being shot, if you hadn't noticed." She wobbled, and he caught her just as her leg gave way. "I'm fine." She noticed the suit on the floor again, and became fixated on the red puddle, the hole in his head. "Actually, I…"

"Alvie. Alvie, look at me, not him."

Reluctantly, her bloodshot eyes shifted. "Bucky, he-"

"Don't think about it."

She fixed her attention on him, attempting to block out the smell of gunfire and blood. "What do we do now?"

"They will have contacted base once they saw me-"

"They won't. All transmissions from this apartment except for my own are blocked," she said automatically, trying not to throw up.

"So they still don't know I'm here," he nodded, "that's something." His normal hand drifted to the nape of her neck, brushing against the dried blood. "Wash your hair, pack a bag. You've got ten minutes."

"We're really running?" she asked, nervously. "But what about all… this?"

"We burn down the apartment. It'll slow them down a few hours, trying to figure out what happened."

The image of a flaming car wreck, all evidence of what happened turned to ash, flashed across her memory. It seemed that, once again, fire was her savior. "But my stuff-"

"Take what you need, _only_ what you need. Where's your liquor?"

"Fourth cupboard along. But-" he silenced her with a kiss.

"I said I wouldn't let them kill you, didn't I? Now go sort yourself out, and don't put too much pressure on your leg."

"'M dizzy."

"You got concussion. You haven't thrown up, so it's fine. It'll pass- now _go_."

Before packing clothes and food, before washing her hair, she limped to her workshop and grabbed seemingly random objects from the shelves, stuffing them into a toolbox. She would be damned if she let HYDRA stop her work, not when she was so close to finishing it. Besides, since her thought room was about to get burnt to the ground, most likely along with all her other computers, she would need it- and if it worked, this would be utterly untraceable.

She stuck her head under the shower and yanked her fingers through her hair until all the blood had washed away, then tied it up into a stubby ponytail. She took an old rucksack out from the corner of her dressing room, gave her eclectic collection of second-hand clothes one last longing look, and sighed as she changed into some oversized jeans and a woolly jumper, before packing similar clothes into the rucksack along with food and her phone, which had digital versions and audiobooks of all that she had set Bucky for homework. It had photos on it, too - not many, but a few. The oldest was a digital scan of a picture of Alvie sat on her grandmother's hip. She couldn't have been more than five or six, grinning at the camera with gaps in her teeth and her hair in pigtails, and it occurred to her present self that is was a lot easier to be happy when one has only suffered through life for as short a time as five or six years. Her grandmother, a humungous black woman with her hair hidden beneath a red polka dot scarf in the photo, had got through seventy of them before she had died, and yet she had, Alvie remembered, borne the troubles she had suffered far better than her granddaughter was currently doing.

 _She never complained,_ Alvie thought. _She was too proud. People were awful to her in that hotel, sometimes. But she never complained._

 _And neither will I._

 _Much._

"Al!"

"Coming!" she said, dropping her phone into her bag.

Bucky had piled all the bodies in the middle of the room, and was standing in the doorway with a lighter in one hand.

"Once we've done this," he said, arm tight around her, "we need to get out of the city."

"I have empty flats all over the US- closest one's Brooklyn, we can stay there a few days."

"It'll take at least overnight for us to get there on foot."

"I can get money out. By person, not machine, so it can't be traced."

"Do that, but we're walking anyway." He dropped the lighter- the flames danced down a trail of alcohol and lit up the pile like Mardis Gras. "We have to run, now."

She grabbed his hand for reassurance. "Okay."

"And… thanks for saving my life, Kennings."

Her red-nosed, red-eyed face broke out into a smile. "Happy to be a'service, _cherié."_

 **A/N this chapter is huuuge. For me, anyway.**


	19. Act I Chapter XVIII

**CHAPTER XVIII**

Once Alvie had withdrawn $9,990 in cash from a very confused accountant, she and Bucky walked - all the way out of the city and along the side of the highway, one of his arms around her waist and the other resting lightly on the pistol tucked into the waistband of his jeans. They started mid-morning and she lasted a whole two hours before practically collapsing, although for a while before that she had been stumbling instead of taking proper steps. Her leg hurt, her feet hurt in these impractical shoes, and after about ten minutes or so the stitch in her side had made it clear that Alvie was severely out of shape. She had been about ready give up completely when Bucky had silently lifted her onto his back, her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. She dozed off with him carrying her, comforted by his familiar smell and feel and the rocking motion of his steps.

At about one in the morning, they reached the outskirts of Brooklyn, but her apartment was on the other side of town and besides, Bucky had mentioned that it wasn't a good idea to go there on the first night. There was a cluster of homeless people underneath Brooklyn Bridge- they approached them instead, keeping away from the crowd with their backs to a massive concrete strut. He lifted her skirt a little, cut away the bandages with a flipknife, and poured alcohol on the wound to clean it before wrapping it up again without saying a word.

"I'm sorry," said Bucky, after hours of silence. "It was my fault they tracked you." He tied off the bandage and pulled at the thread, so the end of it unravelled a little.

"And then you saved my life, so I guess we're kind of even," she replied. "I don't like being homeless, though."

"You get used to it."

"Really?"

"No."

She elbowed him in the ribs, and he smiled lopsidedly. "So what do we do now?"

"I get you safe, and carry on doing what I was before I met you, what I was planning on doing now anyway."

"Finding Bucky," she said. "Y'know, it's probably easier if we split up."

"Not gonna happen."

"I'm dead weight, though. I literally am, I have a useless leg. And we already know that I'm a dangerous person to be around."

"No, you're not." He pulled her toolbox out of her bag. "You realize what you can do with this?"

"What?"

"Especially now SHIELD's dead, information's more valuable than ever. You finish this, you have access to all of it, all of the time. Do you have any idea how powerful that makes you?"

Her spine tingled. "You mean, I become an information broker? Like Oracle in Batman?"

"I don't know who that is, but yeah."

She rested her head against his shoulder. "I… I wouldn't be neutral anymore, Bucky."

"No. But this is your chance to be one of the good guys, instead."

 _That_ was tempting. To no longer have to worry about maintaining a moral equilibrium, yet still without having her decisions made for her by SHIELD. Free to choose what she wanted to do, until she had done enough of the right thing to wash the dripping blood from her hands. If that was possible.

"Sleep," said Bucky, "we'll move in the morning."

She glanced uneasily at the people clustered round a barrel full of fire. "I don't know…"

"If they try anything, they'll have to get through me."

She nodded. "Fair enough." But she couldn't close her eyes- the HYDRA man staggering forward with a bloody forehead was imprinted on her retinas. "Bucky, I can't. I keep thinking about him-"

"Shh." His eyes flicked from her to the people nearby. "Just… think about something else."

"Like what?"

"Like what the hell we're going to do now. Keep moving forward, Al, or the past'll overtake you."

"Keep moving forward." He had abandoned HYDRA, saved his friend and left him, from what she had gleaned from Rogers' texts. When he had been found, he moved on again. "Okay."

"Now for the love of God, go to sleep."

She lay still for half an hour, then started crying again. She _hated_ herself for doing so, but couldn't help it.

 _What next, Kennings? Start fainting every time something happens?_

 _Shut up._

She must have thought aloud, since it elicited a response from her companion; he pulled her onto his lap and held her steady, and she was grateful for the comfort without him actually acknowledging the weakness. Alvie was wrapped in a warm cocoon of safety from the loud and scary outside world, the solid warmth of her big, brave lost boy keeping her safe, just like he had promised. It was only when she was sure he wouldn't put her down that she was able to fall asleep.

%

"Wake up."

"Mmm?" she was curled up with Bucky's body wrapped around hers, her forehead pressed into his shoulder and his normal hand light enough on her bullet wound for it not to hurt. _Morning, lost boy._ "Do I have to?"

"Yeah, we need to move. I hope you know the way from here."

"Get me onto a main road and I will," she yawned. Now that she was awake, Bucky released her and stood up, the metal of his arm glinting in the morning sun beneath his sleeve. "I feel like shit."

"You look it, too."

"Hey! I did just get shot."

"Don't keep it to yourself. I'll walk ahead, see if we're being tailed."

"And if we are?"

"Then I'll stop them," he said, hand drifting to the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He kissed her forehead and disappeared.

"Pull a freaking Batman on me, why don'cha?" she muttered, yawning and cricking her neck. She peered at her bandages; they were a little bloody, but there didn't seem to be any suspicious pus or anything. Her fingers itched and she turned the toolbox over and over in her hands, but she knew that she was hardly in a safe place to do it. Still, she had gone without internet for a good two thirds of a day now, and she wasn't enjoying it.

"Hello, girlie." She looked up; one of the men who had been clustered around the barrel the previous night was grinning down at her with yellowed teeth.

"Um, hi," she said, standing up. "S- sorry, if we were gatecrashing or anyth-"

"Naw, it's fine. C'mon, some Samaritan brought food. You want some?"

She thought of the tins in her bag- but then, she didn't know how long they would have to go without buying anything.

 _He's scary._

 _Bucky was scary. And yet I'm not actually_ scared _of either of them, am I?_

 _So? I still don't wanna talk to them._

 _I never wanna talk to anyone. And they do have food, right?_

 _But it would feel wrong taking anything from them._

 _But they offered. When someone with nothing offers you something, you_ have _to take it, because however little it is, it means so much to them. It would be rude not to._ That was what her grandmother had always said, anyway.

 _UGH. Fine._

"Please," she said, standing up and trying to hide her limp.

The man who had come over to her was called Ern; he introduced her to Ron, Henry, and Mack. They were all quite cheerful; they passed her a tin of beans and showed her how to bend the lid in such a way to use it as a spoon, then told her their life stories.

"What about you, girlie?"

"Trying to avoid getting killed," she said, "no biggie."

"What about that big scary bloke who was with you?" Mack asked.

"Him too. We're not that interesting, though," she lied.

"Now that I doubt. How 'bout you tell us what brought _you_ here, gorgeous?"

"How about you step the hell away from her before I put a bullet in your brain?" said a voice from behind the men, accompanied by the faint _click_ of the safety being pulled back on a gun.

"Whoa! Relax, man!" said Ron, as they spun around. "We ain't gonna-"

"Step away from her."

"Why should we?" said Henry, folding his arms. "This is our patch, not yours. You should be the one moving."

Bucky tilted the gun slightly and shot it just over Henry's shoulder, so that it ripped the fabric of his coat and caught the skin. The man shrieked and they all backed off, swearing loudly.

" _Bucky_! What the hell're you doing, we don't wanna kill them! They're not your enemies."

"I know," he replied, "that's why I missed." His eyes were fixed on them as they fled to the far side of the underpass.

She wrapped her hand around the barrel of the gun and forced it downwards. "I was okay. They weren't threatening me or anything."

"What if they had been?" he demanded.

"I've dealt with worse. You, for starters."

"They called you gorgeous."

"You jealous?"

"No, I… thought they were-"

"Well they weren't, because not everybody's a humungous douchebag."

His hand relaxed around the gun and she pulled it out of his grip. "Sorry," he said.

She shrugged. "You did what you thought was right, it ain't your fault if ya judgement's screwed as hell. Just… try not to be so trigger-happy, okay?"

He gave the men one last look. "'Kay."

She nodded. "We had better move."

It took them about four hours to reach the apartment block that held the flat she had bought years ago, along with several others dotted up and down the country, a few international properties and- perhaps most importantly to her- massive offshore data storage, separate to the cloud, which all her software linked to.

While Bucky was in the shower, having properly washed and redressed her wound, she unpacked the tech she had brought with her and realized it was practically complete- she just needed to install it, as it were. Two tiny pieces of metal housed a supercomputer, a refined version of what had been in the walls of her thought room, as well as the electrodes that translated her neural processes, and another set of her own invention that would sync the information gained to her perception. Wincing, she slipped them into her ears, and shuddered as she felt them latch onto the walls of her ear canal. Her hearing was unaffected, save for a tiny whir- like Bucky's arm, they were powered by her own body energy. It was actually him that had given her that idea.

They were working- next was the on-off switch, two near-microscopic metal plates that she injected under the skin of her thumb and ring finger. Touch them together, and they would turn the computer on and off if she wanted them to be undetected, or just some peace and quiet- she tested it, and the whirring in her ears died. Then it was the wireless hub which connected to her data storage, which also contained a wifi hotspot that she had triple-checked would never crash. The hub took the form of a minute metal stick, about a third of the size of a pin, with a green light on one end; she stabbed it into her good thigh, and wiped away the tiny bloodspot. Unnoticeable usually, she checked that, when she cupped her hand over the area, the light was just visible through the skin. Two more metal plates, this time into the other hand to toggle the wifi.

Bucky came out of the tiny bathroom and watched her suck the blood off her fingers. "What're you doing?" he asked.

"Booting up," she replied, touching her right hand fingers together. The near indistinguishable buzz returned to her ear. "I only have the screens left to go now."

"It's ready?" he asked. "You're doing it now?"

"Sooner rather than later, right?" she unscrewed a pot of saline, in which two innocent looking contact lenses were floating. She fished one out, realized it would be somewhat discombobulating if she only had one in while it was running, and turned off the computer with a snap of her fingers. She put one of the lenses in- it felt a little heavy at first, but after a couple of blinks it settled and she stopped noticing it. The same applied with the other.

"I'm about to turn myself on," she said, and Bucky raised an eyebrow. "Oh, not like that, you idiot." She clicked her fingers, looking out of the window onto the bustling street below.

 **-BOOTING BOOTING BOOTING-**

 ** _Welcome_** flashed across her retinas, and her eyes widened. She focused on one person eating in a café opposite them.

 ** _Samuel Hoggett_**

 ** _Current location: visible_**

 ** _11/4/1969, 2:39pm_**

 ** _Parents deceased, wife divorced_**

 ** _Two counts of possession of illegal substances_**

The words scrolled in a small window hovering beside him, and she laughed weakly. "Holy shit."

"Is it working?" Bucky asked, and she turned to face him.

 ** _James Buchanan Barnes, a.k.a The Winter Soldier_**

 ** _Current location: visible_**

 ** _3/18/1916_**

 ** _Family deceased, no spouse or children._**

 ** _Officially deceased 12/14/1945_**

 ** _Winter Soldier credited by SHIELD as having 27 counts of lethal activities in the last 52 years_**

 ** _Credited by HYDRA as having 63 counts of lethal activities in the last 58 years_**

 ** _Known victims include…_**

She blinked, and sensing her unease the computer wiped the information from the screen. "Yeah," she said, "it's working." She turned back to look out of the window, and a car drove past below.

 ** _2002 registered Volkswagen Passat_**

 ** _Current location: visible_**

 ** _2 previous owners_**

 ** _Travelling at 32mph_**

"Not just for internet, too. It's… calculating stuff. Hmm."

 ** _Distance between this building and building opposite: 24.6 feet._**

She closed her eyes. "Give me a name, of anything I can't see."

"You can't see anything, Alvie. You have your eyes closed."

"You know what I mean," she said impatiently.

"Tony Stark."

She snorted, and instead of the name thought of his face, his fast, clipped voice.

 ** _Identified:_**

 ** _Anthony Edward Stark, a.k.a Iron Man_**

 ** _Current location: Stark Tower, New York (focus for details & coordinates)_**

 ** _5/29/1970_**

 ** _Parents deceased, partner to Virginia "Pepper" Potts_**

 ** _Owner of Stark Industries, formerly CEO of Stark Industries_**

 ** _Financial Backer of the Avengers_**

 ** _Other affiliations include: Dr Bruce Banner, Natalia Romanov more commonly known as Natasha Romanoff, Colonel James Rhodes…_**

"Holy shit," she said again, opening her eyes. The date and time flashed at the corner of her vision, as did the coordinates of her whereabouts, but no new information flashed up- because she didn't want it to. "Bucky, this is… this is amazing. I can see _everything_." She closed her eyes again, and focused on the faint music drifting through the window from the café.

 ** _James Blunt- Bonfire Heart, 7/29/2013, Moon Landing_**

 _Security cameras within sixty feet radius of current position,_ she thought.

 ** _Searching… located._** Across the blackness of the back of her eyelids, a couple of grainy screens flickered into view; she could see a faint figure in the window of a flat that was her. **_Visible on two security cameras. Wipe footage?_**

 _Wipe footage._

 ** _Visible on zero security cameras. Continue to wipe footage collected to avoid detection?_**

 _Continue to wipe._

 ** _Covert mode partially activated. Activate fully covert mode?_**

 _Let's go invisible, shall we? Me and Bucky._

 ** _Alvine Kennings and James Buchanan Barnes now fully covert; all data collected of Alvine Kennings and James Buchanan Barnes automatically deleted. Any detected tracking of Alvine Kennings and James Buchanan Barnes automatically detected, given false trail. Current tracking: two, HYDRA origin, independent- previous data suggests Steven Rogers. False trail set to:_**

Capitol Hill flashed across her mind.

 ** _Washington DC._**

 _Overwrite code: Alvine Kennings and James Buchanan Barnes. Let's just use first name terms._

 ** _Alvine Kennings and James Buchanan Barnes herein referred to as "Alvie"/first person and "Bucky"._**

She had always talked to herself, little conversations flicking back and forth in her head. Perhaps the new voice- or was it a voice? It was hard to tell whether it was speech or text or merely thoughts- might have driven an ordinary person insane. Perhaps she had already lost it years ago. Maybe being mad wasn't such a bad thing, after all.

"You good?" Bucky asked.

 ** _Vital signs normal. Heart rate slightly accelerated. Leg wound appears to be uninfected and healing; redressing recommended in another five hours._**

"I'm good," she said. "Better than good, actually. Fantastic." She grinned, and Bucky smiled back at her.

"You look wired."

"I am." She laughed again. "I've done it, Bucky!" She clicked her fingers- the display across her vision died, and already normal sight felt unusual in comparison. She noticed the presence of the supercomputer in her mind only when it left- the information, the power slipping away from her. But a snap of her fingers could bring it all back. She was powerful. She was capable. She was a force to be reckoned with.

She was Alvie Kennings, and for the first time in her life the outside world no longer scared her.

 **A/N over 200 follows! WOW. Also, I have no idea why James Blunt ended up in here.**


	20. Act I Chapter XIX

**CHAPTER XIX**

It only took her a couple of days to stop differentiating between the computer and herself; by the end of that week, it felt as natural as her own thoughts. She sat, legs crossed in the middle of the poky apartment while Bucky was out, dancing around the web in a way she never could before. The first time she went outside, it overloaded her and she backed into the apartment- she trained herself to keep her thoughts vague when out, only focusing on one thing if she needed to. Another drawback was that, when she got bored and read people's profiles, nothing was held back- she quickly became disgusted with some people, just by their browser history alone. Some things she couldn't unsee- but the worst people, the ones definitely breaking the law, she caught, downloading their files and sending them to the police. One day, she was walking down the street when something caught her eye, without the help of her enhancement.

"Bucky," she said, later that day, "I wanna show you something."

"I can't see what you do, remember?"

"No, it's a real thing. When was the last time you came to Brooklyn?"

"I've never been here before, that I know of."

She nodded. "You won't have seen it, then." She pulled his hood up over his head before leading him out of the door, still hobbling quite badly. "You still trust me?"

"You're making it difficult," he replied, stuffing his metal hand into the pocket of his jacket. "Keep to the backstreets, will you?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"How long is this going to take?"

 ** _Approximately twenty-four minutes until destination reached. Suggested route- next left._**

"About half an hour until we get there, and then you do what you want." They walked the rest of the way in silence, until they reached an unimpressive block of late 1910s apartments.

"What am I supposed to be looking at?" he asked warily.

"Nothing? You not getting anything?" she asked, and he shook his head. "See that plaque up there?"

THIS BUILDING WAS THE

CHILDHOOD HOME OF STEVE ROGERS, AKA

CAPTAIN AMERICA, AND BUCKY BARNES, ROGERS'

BEST FRIEND AND ONLY MEMBER OF THE

HOWLING COMMANDOS TO BE KILLED

IN ACTION.

"This is where you grew up," she said, "you and him. It's a heritage site- not just because of him, but you too. This is as close to holy ground as you get, nowadays."

"Can we go in?" he asked slowly.

"I mean, it's probably not allowed. But on the other hand, it'll probably be the least illegal thing we've done." She blinked; a blueprint of the house projected itself onto the brick walls. "There's an outdoor staircase round the back."

She followed him as he slowly circled the building, picking up on his accelerated heart rate and shallow breathing. He climbed the steps up to a balcony on the third floor, the railing dusty and untouched. The usual kids who would wreck empty buildings hadn't touched here; it was still and quiet, the windows opaque but intact.

Bucky's foot nudged against a brick on the floor, as if expecting to find something beneath it. When he saw it was empty, he turned to Alvie.

"Can I borrow a couple hairpins?" he asked, and she nodded.

Handing them over, she saw how shaken he was- more so than she had ever seen him. "Are you-"

"Yeah." The lock clicked and the door creaked loudly as it opened, making them both wince. "This was Steve's house," said Bucky, and his voice sounded as though it was from a long time ago. "Not mine. Me and my mom, we lived a couple floors above him for half a year before moving down the block. That's how I met him."

 _He's remembering._ Those details weren't on his files; they were all his own.

"Why'd you move?"

"The flat wasn't big enough. There were five of us- me, my mom, my two kid brothers and my little sister." His lip twitched into a smile. "They were jackasses- George smashed Sarah's window, blamed it on me. I got sent round to apologize, and this scrawny little kid with newspaper in his shoes opened the door. I thought he was half my age, at first. And then, when I started school in Brooklyn the next week, he was the class below. I stopped him getting beaten up by some jerk two grades above me, and then he followed me home, telling me all about how he could've taken him if I hadn't turned up."

"What did you say?"

"I said there was no way he could have," said Bucky, "though not for lack of trying. And I said I'd teach him how to box, which was a dumb idea."

"Why?"

"Because then he was convinced he could win a fight, and started getting into them on purpose." He chuckled. "I swear, if a few days passed without him getting a black eye, I thought his parents had died or something." His smile faded. "Then, one week he made it through without a scratch. His mom was dead."

"What about you?" she asked. "Your mama, your family?" As she spoke, she noted and catalogued the data, putting it into her own personal file for him and Rogers.

"My dad got shellshock during the great war. He… mom always said he was a good guy, but that was kinda hard to believe when we saw him knocking her about. One night, he drank himself stupid walked out, we never heard from him again. That' when we moved here. My mom- Ann, her name was Ann- was a superhero, she did all the washing for whatever block we were living in to pay for us, so much that her hands cracked and bled when she moved her fingers. But she never complained, so I never realized how bad it was until I was a teenager. I did a load of odd jobs, trying to help pay, and Steve helped too- but mom wouldn't take the money he made, said it was his."

"What was school like, back then?"

"It sucked," he told her, eyes bright and almost alive as he drunk in the dusty apartment. "I was good at it, though. Nearly top of the class, but not so high I got beaten up for it. I was good at the sports, too. Won every race I entered, nearly." There was a note of pride in his voice. "I would've been popular too, if it wasn't for Steve. But I wasn't gonna leave him to the bullies. When I got orders, they promoted me quick because of how well I'd done in school. I wasn't going to go to college, anyway. I needed a job, to help mom pay for the bills and help save up for Rosie's university fees."

"What happened when you joined the army?"

"I got my orders, found Steve down an alleyway trying to take a guy three times his size, then got shipped out the next day. Then I…" he faltered. "I don't remember."

She took his hand. "Honestly, you exceeded all expectations in remembering stuff just now anyhows."

"It's like… on the edge. Like you know something's there when you close your eyes, but you can't see the colors." His hand was almost painfully tight, and it wasn't even the metal one.

She looked around the room; dust sheets covered larger pieces of furniture, but the shelves were empty. Put in museums, most likely. "You wanna look in your apartment?"

"No. I spent more time in here than I did there." He turned to face her, and rested his forehead against hers. "Thank you."

"No problem." She kissed him. "Although even if HYDRA don't, Rogers'll probably check here regularly. You're gonna have to move again."

" _We're_ moving."

She groaned. "I hate being a nomad."

"It's best if we get out the country, if we can-"

"No," she said, "I hate even going south of Ohio. We go to Manhattan next."

"Right. Where the Avengers are."

"Exactly! Proximity means it's the last place they'll look."

"It's too dangerous."

"I'm going," she said firmly, "there's something- some _one_ I wanna talk to- don't worry, it'll be safe. I have a place there, too. And then-" she had been thinking about this. "Bucky, we need to split up sooner or later. I mean- not like, _split up_ split up, but we're safer away from each other, harder to track. I got HYDRA coming after me and Rogers after you, we don't need them both on the same trail."

"I'm not leaving you," he said fiercely.

"Looka, I'll make you a comms piece so that you can talk to me directly whenever you want. But you're right, you _do_ need to get out the country, and I need to stay here. I can pay for whatever you need, but I want you safe just as much as you do me. Or at least, as safe as an assassin's gonna get."

"But-"

"You've got all you can from the US, I reckon. Go to Europe, Bucky, see what you can find there. Keep moving, don't let me hold you back. I can cover both our tracks, meaning I can look after myself now. We don't need each other anymore."

"I do. I need you."

"Don't be sentimental. You know this is the best option. And I doubt we'll never see each other again, especially since I'll be tracking all your movements."

He smirked. "Kinda creepy."

"We've both done creepier. So does this mean you agree with me?"

He paused. "Fine. But I'm coming to Manhattan with you."

"I was hoping you would," she admitted. "Are you alright? Ya look like you seen a ghost."

He looked around the musty room again. "Just… gimme a minute."

 **A/N my absolute favourite chapter of this act. This also happens to be the last update before Christmas, possibly of the year, since you can expect my updates to be a bit... wobbly over the next couple of weeks. Happy holidays!**


	21. Act I Chapter XX

**CHAPTER XX**

"Bucky? Whatcha thinking?"

He watched as Alvie knelt down in front of where he was sprawled in the corner of the unfurnished apartment, teeth just resting over the edge of her bottom lip. She was gorgeous, in her own odd kind of way - it was the way she acted more than anything. Like a supernova, trapped in skin. He didn't know people could look like that before he met her.

"Just... trying to remember stuff," he said, staring at the wall over her shoulder. People were too hard to look at for long, there was too much information and emotion rushing at them, and that applied to Alvie more than most.

She sat down properly, crossing her legs. "Like what?" she asked, her head cocked slightly to one side.

Shit. What _had_ he been thinking? He was distracted so easy when she was around. "Something Pierce said," he told her, "before we wrecked the Potomac. That..." the words were hazy and jumbled in his head, and remembering them was like catching smoke. "They... We... Were at the tipping point between order-" he slammed a fist into his chest, "- and chaos." With the same hand, he reached forward and brushed his fingers against the skin showing beneath her undone shirt.

"Oh."

That area of skin over her sternum was impossibly soft. He drew circles with his index finger, feeling a small sense of satisfaction when Alvie shivered. "Then Rogers saved my life," he said, "and I still don't... I still don't get why. I'd done nothing but try to kill him."

"People are weird," Alvie told him, and he smiled.

"Yeah. And then I stopped him from drowning, and we're square, but he's still- he's still looking for me."

"And?"

"And I don't want him to. I mean... it's hard enough to think as it is. It's not like it was with HYDRA, everything happens at once now, it..."

"Makes no sense?" Alvie finished for him, and he nodded. "Remember when I said you think one mission or objective or whatever at a time? Real life ain't like that. And I think what you're saying is you need to figure out real life first, before you go back into your, uh, old real life."

He undid the other buttons on her shirt so he could reach beneath it and encircle her waist with his arm. "Somethin' like that."

She was biting her lip again. "You got more of a Brooklyn accent since you came here," she said, "but that might just be a chameleon response."

"Hadn't noticed," he admitted, pulling her onto his lap.

"Yeah, well. You don't notice when people are talking different languages, huh, cherié?"

"Oh, really?" he asked in what he hoped was Russian, squeezing her side so she shrieked and writhed, giggling as she made a halfhearted attempt to get out of his grasp.

"Jerk," she said, as he lifted his other hand to cup the back of her head, the metal fingers gentle against the lump that had formed where HYDRA had knocked her out. Up this close, he could see every little imperfection on her face, from the scar on her forehead to the birthmarks that ran across her cheekbone in three neat little marks.

"What are we doing for food tonight?" he asked.

"Takeout, just like for the recent past and the foreseeable fu- mmm!" she exclaimed as he kissed her, and he felt her tiny, nimble hands settle on his shoulders. He kissed along her jawline and downwards to bury his face in her neck, breathing in her familiar smell of silicon, spice, and some expensive perfume.

He would have to leave her, this crazy girl with this beautiful messy smell, if he would ever have even a hope of getting his head straight. Alvie was hypnotic, intoxicating, but while they were together he was putting her in danger, especially since he could barely string two thoughts together. To think that he had almost shot the men under the bridge for daring to go near her...

That was not the action of a sane man. But he had just wanted her to be _safe._

"I owe you," he said into the hollow of her collarbone, voice thick and heavy. "So god damn much."

Her fingers teasing through the tangles of his hair made him shiver. "No ya don't," she said, "you saved my life."

"And you fixed me," he said, then hesitated. No, it wasn't because of that, it was... "You thought I was worth fixing."

"'Course you are. I'm always right," she reminded him, "occupational hazard a'being a genius."

"Yeah, yeah."

He wouldn't, _couldn't_ leave her. She had lived in her own little world for years, and knew about as much about real life as he did. He needed her, she needed him, and the rational, impartial part of his mind that said separate was safe could go to hell. Why would he want to think straight, anyway?

She leant back from him, cheeks flushed and breathing slightly heavily. Chanel No 5, that was the perfume she wore. He remembered the bottle he had found in her bathroom, and marvelled how she thought it was a necessity for going on the run. Crazy-ass woman. It was a heavy smell, almost unpleasant in fact, but he savoured it on her.

"I'm worried about you."

"Why?" he asked.

"You need to getcha head straight, Barnes," she said, hands still in his hair.

"No, I don't."

"Yeah, ya do. We _both_ do." He could see the screens on her eyes when he was this close, silvery-blue flickers across the brown iris. "Hang on…" she unfocused for a moment. "I have to work, _cherié_. Sorry." She kissed him one last time. "Go self-discover."

He didn't want to leave her. But sometimes, life didn't give them much choice.

 **A/N reviewer asked for more romantic stuff, so more romantic stuff ye shall get in the form of Bucky being a complete hot mess. This was written in a flurry, so sorry if it makes no sense. Happy new year!**


	22. Act I Chapter XXI

While Bucky was out, she closed the curtains in their latest residence and tuned out of the external world until she became part of the internet completely.

Although the internet was in theory worldwide and boundary-less, region locks and so on made it easier to access private servers if she was in proximity to them. And Stark Industries was probably the most well-protected private server in the world, so being close meant she could effectively halve the time it took to sync herself to their systems.

Still, it took her all of ten minutes to break in, access the domestic servers and gain the attention of a certain AI.

 _-Hello?_

 _JARVIS! It's me!_

 _-Good afternoon, Miss Kennings. It's been too long._

 _I doubt your boss would agree._

 _-It's a good thing I haven't notified him of your presence, then. What are you doing?_

 _JARVIS, how did you know it was me?_

 _-I recognized your digital thumbprint from your work on myself._

 _Would anybody else be able to identify me if I hacked in?_

 _-Not a soul._ The AI sounded amused.

 _Right. I wanna make an offer to Tony Stark- anonymously, that is. And the other Avengers._

 _-Would you like me to pass on a message?_

 _Show them these._ She transferred files to the Stark servers. _HYDRA's records of activity across the globe, including Strucker's. Everything they need to track them down. Tell them I wanna make a deal._

 _-Which is?_

 _I broker information to them. Whatever they need, if it's not too sensitive, I pass on. If it's been on the web at any point, I can find it._

 _-And in return?_

She actually hadn't thought that far ahead. What did she want, more than anything right now? For her and Bucky to be safe, but to ask for that would give them both away. What else?

To be a good guy.

 _I want to be their ally, one of them. Not- not an Avenger, obviously. But if they need information, they come to me. They trust me, first, before anyone else. I want to be their eyes and ears. I don't want the publicity, I'm okay staying in the shadows since it's probably safer- but I want_ them _to acknowledge me._

 _-I shall let Mr Stark know. How will I contact you again?_

 _Just send out a message, I'll find it._

 _-What shall I call you?_

There was no way she wasn't going to grab this opportunity for a superhero name with both virtual hands. Something that evoked knowledge, and goodness.

 _Athena. Call me Athena._ If Tony Stark called himself Iron Man, she could be named after a goddess.

 _-Very humble,_ JARVIS replied drily.

 _I regret programming you to be a sarcastic son of a bitch._

 _-I wish I could agree. I expect you shall have an answer within the day._

 _Sweet. Thanks, J._

 _-You are very welcome,_ he said, _Athena._

Back in the real world, she grinned.

"What're you so happy about?"

Alvie jumped as she severed the connection between her and JARVIS. "Maybe something, maybe nothing," she told Bucky, who was leaning in the doorway. "How long have you been standing there for?"

"About five minutes. I found the mains circuit, for when you want electricity."

"Thanks," she said, standing up. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah. Just… thinking." He pursed his lips. "It's been a long morning."

"It's barely ten," she said, "how long've you been awake since?"

"Three," he replied, knocking the heel of his boot against the skirting board. "I've been doing… stuff."

"Interesting," she said, and he rolled his eyes. "You've got your thinkin' face on, by the way. What for?"

He sighed, a great big sigh, then walked forward and wrapped his arms around her. "Germany," he said, resting his chin on top of her head.

"Lovely Christmas markets, so I hear." _He's thinking about how he'll have to leave._

 _I don't want him to leave._

 _Don't be selfish. He needs to do this._

 _But…_

 _But what? If it was your life you were trying to hide, wouldn't you want to go?_

 _I wouldn't want to leave me. Her. Whatever._

 _But you would have to. And you'd want your blessing._

"Alvie," he said.

"What?"

"… Nothing." She could hear the smirk in his voice, that asshole thin-lipped smirk.

"Whatever." She placed her hands on his chest. "Has anyone ever told you how perfectly formed you are? Like, dude. Seriously."

"Stop objectifying me, Kennings," he said, and she snorted.

"You're my boyfriend," she said, "I'm kinda allowed to, now. Bucky, why were you thinking about Germany?"

He looked away. "Next thing on the list," he said heavily, "Bucky Barnes went from Brooklyn to Germany."

 _But do_ you _?_ she thought, _whoever the hell you are at the moment?_

He saw the way he was looking at her and kissed her, then broke it off with their foreheads resting against each other. "I never expected this," he muttered, and she suspected mainly to himself. "I never expected you."

"Sorry for screwing up your plans."

"'S fine." His voice was slowing and slurring, its owner slipping into one of his lethargic, heavy moods when the lack of cryostasis stung and paralysed. "You're almost worth it."

"Excuse me, Barnes," she said, " _almost_?"

"… You got a problem with that?"

"Unbelievable," she said, "unbe- _freakin'-_ lievable. Sheesh," she said, folding her arms and stepping away.

Bucky laughed, and she felt the same glow of pride she always did whenever he looked anything even remotely resembling happy. No matter where Bucky was, Brooklyn or Manhattan or Germany, she would still have the knowledge that she could make him smile, regardless of how shitty his life had been- and boy, had it been shitty. Distance and borders didn't mean shit to two lovers with a cell phone connection.

%

 ** _Message for Athena- Tony Stark awaiting response_**

"Hang on a minute," she said to Bucky, a few hours after she had found JARVIS. She dropped the chopsticks into the takeaway box and closed her eyes.

 _What does he want?_

 ** _Message reads-_**

 ** _Great, another one. We'll follow up a few of these leads and if we're still alive at the end of them, I'll have J contact you again if we need you. Which we may well do, considering SHIELD's dead in the water and I've got better things to spend my money on. I look forward to working with you, Athena._**

 ** _-Tony_**

"It was always Mr Stark when I was working with him," she reflected, " _and_ we had sex."

"Well?" Bucky asked, on his second box of stir fry. The guy was like a bottomless pit for food.

"I dunno if he asked the others, but from what he said…" she allowed herself a grin. "I've got a new job."

He leant forward, clinked his beer bottle against hers. Since they had been to the old apartment block, he had been a little more relaxed, a little more trusting of her- he still thought everyone else was out to get him and still had moments were he seemed about to fall asleep for no reason, but he had got just a slight amount better since they went to the apartment. Like he knew what he was looking for, now.

"Congratulations."

"Well, it'll be the first time in my life I'm actually working, so I'm not putting all my eggs in one basket," she said. "You still worried about me?"

"Not as much," he said.

"I was perfectly fine before you turned up on my doorstep, y'know."

"You tried to attack me with a laptop."

"That was a perfectly rational response!"

"Sure," he agreed, unable to keep the grin off his face.

She pouted.

"Alvie," he said, "you sure you're okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" she asked, "everything's coming up Kennings."

"You have a bullet hole in your leg. And you did kill a guy a week and a half ago."

She looked down. "Thanks for reminding me."

"You'd seriously forgotten?"

"No, dumbass! I was repressing it! That's what I do!"

"Oh. Sorry."

"Too late now," she said moodily. "Go on then, tell me how I'm gonna have to spend the rest of my life trying to clean off the red."

"What? No, I was going to say you did the right thing."

She raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"It was that or let them either shoot me or take me back to HYDRA, and then probably the same with you."

"I guess."

"It was a shit choice to make," he said gently, "but you did good."

"You're just saying that because you stayed alive 'cause of it."

"Hell yeah, I am! You've known me less than two months, and you recognized me as a murderer. Yet you still thought I was worth saving."

"I had to," she replied, "I have to believe the worst people are redeemable, or what hope do I have for myself?"

"You're not as bad as you think you are," he said.

"Neither are you. Remember that, Bucky. You're a victim, not a villain."

"You didn't know what would happen with your parents, Al."

"I was an attention seeking brat who thought it would be a good idea to cut my parents' brakes to try and make 'em love me. How is that a sane thing to do?"

"I never said you weren't crazy," he said. "Just that you aren't evil. Just…"

"Just what?"

"Lonely."

 _Lonely._ First time round, she had wanted to be noticed; second time, she already had been and didn't want to lose them. Him. "Well, that ain't gonna help me argue my cause."

"Which is?"

She took a deep breath. She had been thinking about this since the apartment; she wouldn't be a burden on him, wouldn't hold him back. "You need to go, Bucky. Find yourself properly, go to Europe. They'll have more stuff there about the war, and HYDRA and the KGB. You know ya can't stay."

He looked away from her. "I know," he said, "I was… thinking about it."

"Oh?"

"And I don't want to?"

"So… so you're not going?"

"No," he said, "I am. The Winter Soldier needs a mission, whether Bucky Barnes likes it or not."

She smiled. "At least you can have opinions now. That's impressive."

"Don't patronise me, Kennings."

"I wasn't!" she protested, "honest. Stop looking at me like that."

"You can come with me," he said, "there's always that option. Athena's portable."

"But Alvie isn't," she said, "Alvie avoids travelling more than twenty miles at a time, whenever possible." She buried her face in her hand. "God damn freakin' _geography,_ man."

"Like you said, it's not like this is all contact lost, forever. I still need you, I need your help if I want to survive. I need Athena, and… and I need Alvie."

"I should hope so," she said, her voice worryingly close to breaking. "I kind of need Bucky Barnes, too."

He nodded. "Good. Nice to know the relationship isn't one-sided. Oh, and I leave in two days."

She choked on her beer. "Wait, _what_? When were you planning on telling me this?"

He shrugged, leaning back onto his mismatched elbows. "I only found out this afternoon."

"But- but that's two days away."

"I know. That's what I just said."

"They didn't give you much notice!" she exclaimed.

"I'm going via a cargo ship, since they don't ask questions."

"You're being a sailor."

"Yep."

"That's… kinda hot," she admitted.

"I aim to please," he grinned over his bottle.

"I can't believe you went ahead and did it without telling me," she added, "getting the cargo ship job, I mean."

"I knew you wanted me to go," he said, still with the remnant of a grin.

"What?! How?!"

"Al," he said, "you talk to yourself. Why else did you think you were so bad at lying?"

She frowned, and threw her shoe at him. He ducked it, laughing. "I hate you."

"I know."

 **A/N bad news - this is the second to last chapter of this act. Good news - to tide y'all over until Civil War, I'm doing an anthology-type thing of oneshots and ficlets called the Civilian Files, which will be starting in a couple weeks with a Captain America/Reader Insert oneshot. Yay!**


	23. Act I Chapter XXII

**CHAPTER XXII**

"This is our last day on Earth, Barnes. Gotta make it count."

"It actually isn't."

"Uh, it actually is," she retorted. "I got you a present. Also, you need this if I wanna keep in touch with you." She handed over the box. "Bog standard smartphone I upgraded a bit so it's always got signal, and it's untrackable. When I call, promise you'll answer. Don't ignore me."

"Unless I'm busy getting the shit beaten out of me, I'll answer," he said wryly. "Thanks."

"You are very welcome," she said. They were back in the Brooklyn apartment, and she had covered the surfaces with hundreds of tealights, on all the windowsills and in a circle round them on the floor. The reason was not sentimental and romantic so much as the place wasn't wired up to the mains electricity, and it had been Alvie who went out to buy some form of light source so obviously they weren't going to end up with anything sensible. "D'you think this is a fire hazard?"

"Yeah. Hang on," he said, stepping over the tealights and into what would have been a bedroom, if it had had a bed in it.

"What're you doing?"

"Merry Christmas," he said, holding something out to her.

"You… you bought me a baseball bat."

"It'll work better than a laptop," he pointed out.

"You asshole," she chuckled, weighing the bat in her hands before putting it aside. "Although I appreciate the thought, even if the probability of my home getting broken into by two supersoldiers in four months is pretty low."

"You're in the Avengers neighbourhood now. Don't be so sure."

"I'll take my chances," she said. "I'm gonna miss you."

"Uh-huh," he said.

"This is the part where you say you'll miss me, too."

"Bit sentimental," he replied, and she stuck her leg out to kick him. He caught it easily and she shrieked as he pulled her towards him by her ankle, then onto his lap.

"Hello," she said, her face a couple of inches from his. "Have we met before?"

"I don't think so," he murmured. "My name's Bucky."

"Nice to meet you, Bucky. I'm Athena."

"Dumb name," he murmured.

"Says you. Hey."

"What?"

"You called yourself Bucky."

"Yeah," he said, "I was thinking, I'm not… I'm not Sergeant Bucky Barnes anymore, I can never be him again, there's too much of the Soldier in me to get back to that. But I'm not just HYDRA's lapdog anymore, I'm like – I'm just Bucky. I guess that's all I found, just Bucky. And I'm alright with that. It's a good place to start. Thanks to you, Miss Kennings."

"You are very welcome." They kissed again, and with one arm steadying her he rose up onto his knees and leant forward a little. "I don't want you to go."

He paused. "You suggested it."

"Mmm." She curled her fingers into his shirt. "Sensible, logical, _practical_ me suggested it. Slightly batshit crazy me wants you to stay, Bonnie and Clyde style."

"I don't know who they are, Alvie."

"Folie à deux."

"Yeah," he said, "as much as I hate the idea of leaving you on your own, killer couple ain't a good idea."

"Which is why we don't let batshit crazy me make the decisions."

"I dunno," said Bucky, "she is kind of… captivating."

"Captivating, huh?"

"Don't push it."

%

She walked down to the harbour with him, both in hoods and sunglasses (well, Alvie in a bandana and overlarge frames with lurid plastic flowers on them). It was early in the working morning as sun wove its unchanging way through the cranes and shipping containers, giving everything the beautiful glow of innocence as a symphony of breakfast radio came from every speaker and phone. "I packed you lunch," she said, holding onto his hand as though she was strong enough to hold him back.

"You're not my mother," he reminded her.

"I am nowhere near as cool as your mom sounded. Please be careful," she said. "I mean, you're more than capable of looking after yourself, and you are no doubt gonna live a very dangerous lifestyle, but still. Please be careful."

"Don't worry about me," he said. He had already started growing his beard back in, meaning he was much less recognisable. "Worry about you. HYDRA won't give up, y'know. I learnt that from experience."

"I'm smarter than their entire organisation put together, so I'm not worried. Bucky, if Steve finds you, or if you find him, just- just give him a chance. You've both saved each other's lives more times than I can count, and I'm a computer."

"I don't know if he'll give me a chance. And even if he does, I doubt the rest of 'em will."

"Just don't go all Winter Soldier on them. Be Bucky- although maybe not too Bucky, or they might start wondering about what you've been doing. And-"

"Don't mention you, I know."

"I reckon, like a fifty/fifty balance. So, the Winter Soldier, who's been so _alone_ and _isolated_ but he's so determined to find his past self, but he hasn't properly yet because his arm was always working so he never met this cute engineer programmer girl who helped him on his path to self enlightenment as he realized that true love is the key to discovering your pure self."

"Don't exaggerate."

"Pretty sure I wasn't." She caught his eye and they both laughed, voices drowned out by the clinking of tonne-heavy chains. "And when you're done, you find me, okay?"

"Okay." He glanced up as a beardy man yelled at him from across the dock. "I gotta go now."

She kissed him like it was her last day on earth, as the radio show loudest to them began a new song. The sound of-

 ** _Dream a Little Dream of Me_**

 ** _Mama Cass Elliot_**

 ** _1968_**

-serenaded them.

"You think we're moving a little fast?" he murmured. "We've only known each other two months."

"Shush your mouth." She fiddled with the straps on his rucksack, searching for something else to say that wouldn't take forever. "Bucky, I-"

"I know," he said, the air he exhaled hot on her lips. "Whatever it is, I already know."

"I think you know."

"You think I know what I know?"

"You know I thi- for God's sake, Barnes."

 _"Say night-y night and kiss me;_

 _Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me..._ _"_

"I'll come back, Al. I swear."

"I know. You be a lost boy, but ya still got me to come back to, always. Always. _A la prochaine fois, mon cherié_ ," she murmured. He kissed her one last time, and ran off to the overlarge cargo ship.

She blinked away tears, and watched the ship make its slow progress out of the harbour.

 ** _Incoming message from- Avengers Tower. Open message?_**

"Yeah," she said aloud. "Time to save the world."

 _Just a touch melodramatic?_

 _I'm a good guy, now. I'm allowed a bit of melodrama._

With all the information of the world coursing through her being, Alvie Kennings beamed madly as Athena stepped forth.

 **END OF ACT ONE**

 **A/N ta-da! There'll be an interlude, aka a one-chapter thing, out about March time, and expect Act Two, which I'm 90% sure will be called When In Wonderland, shortly after Civil War. Until then, there's the Civilian Files and the rest of the Civvie Chrons, and I hoped you liked the first act!**


	24. Interlude I

_"Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war,_

 _For a leading role in the cage?"_

 _\- Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd_

 **INTERLUDE I**

"We all know about the heroism of Steve Rogers, much better known of course as Captain America, but what about his invaluable support team?" The crackly voiceover said in its vintage jolly fashion. "This documentary, exclusively for members of you, the great US military, will give us a behind-the-magic look at the great- and much underappreciated- _Howling Commandos!_

"Ladies first! Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the femme fatale with a stiff upper lip, Agent Peggy Carter!" The footage changed from a group shot to one of a dark-haired woman in a control room with her hands clasped behind her back. "This feisty lady is not only one of Britain's foremost military intelligence specialists, she is also the eyes and ears of our daring Commandos- and has been known to lend her well-manicured hands to a mission or two, ha ha!"

"So Peggy," said the interviewer to the woman sat opposite him, "what makes the Commandos so successful?"

"Trust," she said after a moment's thought. "Trust, the best men the army have, and, on occasion, sheer dumb luck."

"So- who are these 'best men'? Why, the infantry of the 107th battalion of course! With their great Captain at the helm there are seven in all, but let's start off with the man who knows his leader the best- Bucky Barnes."

Lounging back in his chair, Bucky had the smirk of someone who was attractive and knew it. But as he talked, the footage they played over his war stories was of a pretty man often laughing his head off at the star-spangled blond stood next to him.

"Steve never knew when to back away from a fight," Bucky explained over a shot of him unloading a sniper barrel into an enemy's head, "lucky for him, he was born just at the right time the world needed that. I'm just here to stop him getting himself killed in the process. I've done that most of my life already, but it got a damn sight harder when he grew one foot upward and three feet outwards."

"Do you ever feel overshadowed by him?" the interviewer asked, and Bucky narrowed his eyes at them.

"What kind of question is that?" he asked, a little too quickly. "No, of course I don't. He's my best friend, I knew him when he couldn't reach the top shelf. The only thing I'd envy him for is the amount of broads fawning over him, but since he's not interested it's hardly a problem for me." The crooked smile returned.

Alvie, sat in the back of the theatre for the V-day memorial special, drinking in the shot of Bucky like it was the first time she had ever seen him. It was more like she was looking at the brother of _her_ Bucky than the man himself... he was so young, so cocky and polished. There was still light behind his eyes.

"You don't seem to be taking this war very seriously, Mr Barnes."

"It's called gallows humor," he responded in that whisky-smooth voice. "Besides, I'm not afraid of dying."

 _Good thing too,_ Alvie thought, _because death is the least worst thing you gotta face, pretty boy._

%

Later that day, she sat on the toadstool of the Alice Statue in Central Park with her phone sandwiched between her shoulder and her ear and a grin like, somewhat appropriately, the Cheshire Cat on her face. "I'm peachy," she said, picking at her shoelaces, "peachy keen. Probably not getting enough sleep, but y'know. That's probably a common thing for all superheroes."

"Probably." She could hear the smile in Bucky's voice, over the sound of traffic and distant voices in the background of the call.

 ** _Language identified as: German_**

Bucky still hadn't kicked the habit of talking in whatever language he had heard; she doubted he even realized they weren't speaking English right now.

"So how are ya?" she asked in her first language, "you still searching?"

"I dunno," he said, slipping back into English, "I think… I think I'm going to stop for a while, maybe. I'm tired of running. I would tell you what's been happening, but -"

"It's safer not to," she finished for him, "I got it. Where do ya go now, then?"

"Find some place nobody'll think to look for an assassin," he said, "I know how to go dark, at least. I would come back for you, but with people still on both our tails it wouldn't be safe. I'll find my way back eventually, but for now I need to lie low."

"You might wanna hide your cyborg arm, then. And you really… you really don't want to try and find Steve?"

"He's looking for me," Bucky said shortly, "but I don't want to be a part of that anymore. I don't want to fight, regardless of who for."

"And then there's me," she said, "working for the Avengers."

" _With_ ," he corrected her, "not for. You make a better superhero than I do."

 _"Connerie!_ Although I dunno how good you're gonna be at being a civilian," she added, closing her eyes and losing herself in the sound of his voice. The thing about Bucky was that he was so reassuringly real, and steady, and quiet, so much so that when she was with him, even so much as on the phone to him, the loud and noisy world was easily drowned out.

"Nice to know you have faith in me," he laughed, and she felt a pang of homesickness for him. That was funny - this man who she had barely known for a few months felt more like home than any building she had ever lived in, outside of New Orleans at least. "If anything happens, I'll get a message to you. But you... you can't come looking for me."

"But -"

"I'm serious, Alvie. For both our sakes." His tone was sharp and final, slipping back into what she thought of as the Winter Soldier part of him, the part that kept her safe.

She opened her eyes and stuck her tongue out at a little girl who was staring at her. "I promise I won't come looking for you," she said, and he nodded.

"Good. I don't want anything to happen to you because of me."

"Whatever," she murmured, "you should go, before someone starts listening in on either end."

"Al, don't be mad."

"I'm not," she sighed, "I'm bitter. There's a difference. _You're_ the mad one, y'know."

"Since when?" he asked. She liked it when he talked like this, when the monotone voice fell away to reveal the lazy smirks and gentle teasing she would sometimes receive from him.

"Well," she said, "for starters, there was that time you tried to kill me. Remember? When I woke up and you had your hands around my neck? I didn't even give my consent, dude. Seriously."

"I said sorry," he retorted, "be flattered I thought you were a threat."

"Huh?" she asked.

"I was conditioned to eliminate anything that might become my weakness," he explained, "you compromised me."

"Aw," she said, "babe. That's so _cute._ "

"You're a thorn in my side, Kennings." The line went funny for a moment. "I gotta -"

"Go," she laughed, "go and run away again, lost boy. I love you."

"Feeling's mutual." That made her smile; that and the fact she had _compromised_ him. How important must she be, to break through a lifetime of indoctrination and discipline?

She hung up the phone and stuck it in her pocket, then noticed the little girl had climbed up to sit next to her. She smelt very strongly of candyfloss, and her eyes had that crazed look of someone who had had way too much sugar.

"Who was that you were talking to?" she asked, as Alvie tried to widen the gap between them.

"Boyfriend," she said, "haven't ya got parents to go find, kid?"

"They're around somewhere," the little girl shrugged, "why's he not here?"

"Why are you so annoying?" Alvie retorted, placing a finger on the girl's forehead and pushing her away.

"I'm not annoying," protested the girl, "I'm cute."

 _Oh, good lord._

"Go away," Alvie said, "I'm busy."

"Busy doing what?"

 ** _Unread messages from: Tony Stark, Maria Hill, Unknown Source & four others_**

"Being a superhero," she said, "now scram, kid."

"Are you Black Widow?"

"Black Widow's white and ginger," said Alvie, "no."

"Are you Scarlet Witch?"

"Still the wrong ethnicity." Athena bleeped at her, with alerts about breaches and cookies and digital fingerprints. "Actually, I'm Iron Man."

The girl screwed up her face. "No, you're not. He's a man."

"Am too, and that's my secret identity. Tony Stark's a decoy."

"No he's not!"

"You ever seen Iron Man's face?" she asked, "he's got a mask, ain't he? Could be anyone under there."

The little girl's eyes widened. "Wow."

"Yep. Now sod off before I laser blast you." She scrambled off the Alice statue, and Alvie chuckled to herself. She was _way_ too cool to be Iron Man.

 **A/N because I'm not cruel enough to make you wait ALL THE WAY until Civil War, and besides - we just passed 300 follows! Wow. FTR I've already drafted out some parts of Act II and I have pretty good idea of the plot. Man, I'm so excited for that film. Anyway... I hoped you liked this little whatever-this-is, especially the bit at the beginning with the documentary. This whole thing was pretty much just an excuse to write that, to be honest.**


	25. Act II Chapter I

**IMPORTANT: this is set over the course of Civil War so, of course, expect Civil War spoilers.**

 **ACT II: WHEN IN WONDERLAND**

 **CHAPTER I**

 ** _Incoming message: unknown sender_**

 _"Athena. I need your skillset."_

 _Who are you?_

 _"Nobody important. But these files are encoded, and beyond my own abilities."_

 ** _Files attached: identified as part of the HYDRA dump performed by Black Widow. Several layers of encryption detected._**

 _"You will not read them."_

 _And why's that, my dude?_

 _"You will not want to. Simply strip them to their final layer, and I shall do the rest. I will know if you go further."_

 _Is that a threat?_

 _"I will leave that to your own determination. It will take several months in order to –"_

 _I'll have it finished by the end of the week. Do you have a name, sir-madam-variations-thereupon? I make a point of learning my clients' names. User reviews are pretty valuable, nowadays._

 _"This is not a joke, Athena."_

 _Got it, got it. But give me your name. I promise I won't do a background check – I never do, it helps to keep my hands clean._

 _"I know. That is why I came to you. My name is Zemo."_

%

 _A few months later_

A little to the north of NYC, in a cluster of homes, manors and with gardens so large that the neighbors weren't even within shouting distance, was a house that looked like the architectural equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle made out of a dozen different photos. There were higgledy-piggledy chimneys and two back doors and a big, circular window at the front of the attic that looked uncannily like the eye of a Cyclops, glaring down on anybody callous enough to go past the spiky iron fence. As a matter of fact, those who actually managed to do so were invited, since the house's security systems would make the Pentagon's look like an elastic band around a Tupperware box.

The kids of the upper-class community were convinced that the lone woman who resided within it was a witch. She was a billionaire, their mothers gossiped over their glasses of wine; an heiress, and a reclusive one at that. She was from New Orleans, and everyone knew voodoo witches came from New Orleans. The children gave the witch's house a wide berth, and its owner was not complaining about that. Meanwhile, the mothers continued to gossip – about offshore tax evasion gone wrong, sex scandals, an illegitimate child – because what self-respecting young lady would live on her own in the middle of nowhere? On this particular morning, the sounds of the highway just visible from the attic window muffled by the copse trees it dwelled in, the house was shrouded in the silence made up of the sounds of nature, and no sounds came from the building within to disturb it –

KABOOM!

\- _Barely_ a sound came from the building within to –

"BOLLOCKS!"

\- The house was _relatively_ quiet –

 _TzzzBANG!_

" _MERDÉ!"_

Oh, never mind.

Inside the house, which made even less sense than its exterior, Alvie Kennings balanced precariously on a teetering pile of books as she fished around in the wires dangling from the hole she had smashed in her ceiling, welding goggles down and over her eyes to protect them from the sparks. The floorboards were shaking to full volume 70s pop rock, and she was just _waiting_ for one of the neighbors to lodge a sound complaint.

"Do _not_ ," she ordered the wiring, "catch fire on me again. Or it's into the trash with you, ya cheap load a'crap."

She removed a nondescript tool from where it had been stuck in the knot of her ponytail, did something very fiddly and undoubtedly quite clever with it, and hopped off of her pile with the grace and poise of a ballerina with concrete blocks on her feet.

"Check it, Athena," she said, fingers crossed.

 ** _Alpha hardware installation appears to be successful. Testing recommended._**

"I gotta finish programming the damn thing first," she muttered, returning the tool to her hair. "Also… fix that ceiling hole… Mute music."

"Music muted," said the temporary synthetic voice that ran her houseware systems until she completed her more long-term programme, cutting David Bowie off mid-lyric.

 ** _Recommendation: get Eva to do it._**

"She's shorter than I am. I'll have to wait for Bucky to get back," she said to the words in her head, "if and when. Not that I'll have any idea once he does set foot on sweet New York soil, since that damned Mouse woman refused to help me." She sniffed disapprovingly, taking off her goggles and rubbing at the lines they had left pressed into her forehead. "Anything else I gotta do?"

 ** _Meeting with Secretary of State in DC at 1100, Avengers HQ._**

Alvie yelped. "Since when?" she asked, sliding down the banister of the main flight of stairs and leap-frogging the post at the last moment. Waiting at the bottom was her baseball bat, iron-tipped, lethal, and the nicest, most considerate present anyone had ever bought her. She grabbed it as she went past.

 ** _Meeting arranged between General Ross, Anthony Edward Stark and Athena today at 0943._**

"Gah!" Alvie explained, pelting out of the house towards her garage, the doors unlocking and locking themselves as soon as they registered her presence coming and going. The garage doors too opened on her arrival, and she climbed through the window into the driver's seat of a postbox red Karmann Ghia, and tore down her driveway in a billowing cloud of exhaust fumes and gravel kicked up by the tires.

As she reached the highway, Alvie began to panic as she realised that going to visit Ross would mean revealing her identity, not least because Stark would be there as well. But according to the message he had left, while being face-to-face the meeting would also be off the record, which had intrigued Alvie just as much as it had reassured her. What would the shiny new secretary want with her that needed to be under the table? And what did her former employer and ex-boyfriend have to do with it?

The drive to the HQ took about half an hour since it was within state boundaries, with Athena wiping the data from every speed camera that picked her up as she zoomed past. The computer in Alvie's head directed her to a glossy and important-seeming building that looked little different from the other glossy and important-seeming buildings she had visited in the past, and men in black combat gear with worryingly large guns watched her as she parked, her wheels bumping up onto the kerb outside the entrance.

"You can't park here, ma'am."

"Too late," she said, clambering out and sliding on a pair of sunglasses. She liked them for their big plastic roses that adorned the frames, and fondly recalled a time when she had placed them on the face of one of the world's premier assassins. She skipped inside and dangled herself over the desk, her glasses slipping down her nose as she peered at the receptionist behind it. Like everyone else there, she had the Avenger "A" logo emblazoned across her uniform. "I have an appointment," she said.

"Who with?"

"Head honcho man from the Capitol. Not Ellis, the other one. Whossisface. Ross."

"Someone'll take you right along, ma'am. Can I take your name?"

"No."

"Oh… in that case, you'll have to leave your weapon here."

"It's not a weapon," Al said solemnly, "it's a fashion accessory."

The receptionist didn't push it.

Another Avenger drone collected her and escorted her to a sort of communal living area, wherein there were two figures stood waiting around a flashy glass conference table with a large screen that separated it from the rest of the open plan room. The shorter of the two turned around, and his jaw dropped as he recognized her.

" _Kennings?!_ "

Alvie's heart did something funny, then immediately filled with lead. She turned around and saw the one and only Tony Stark gawping at her. "Oh," she said without enthusiasm, "hey."

"Don't," he said, "do _not_ tell me you're Athena."

"What, so you're allowed a superhero alter-ego but I'm not?" she asked, folding her arms. "And I guess that's considered fair in whatever fairyland it is you reside in. Created any more monsters recently?"

Tony's eyes narrowed. "Still running away from your problems?" he asked with equal hostility, and Alvie flushed. "You could've at least left me a note."

"Like you woulda read it, Stark. Why am I here?"

"Because we could use an asset like you, miss…?" the other man tailed off.

"Kennings." They would have her by facial recognition and Stark's memory at this point, anyway.

"Miss Kennings."

 ** _FACIAL RECOGNITION ACTIVATED_**

 ** _General Thaddeus E. Ross_**

 ** _US Secretary of State_**

 ** _Affiliations: Hammer Industries, Stark Industries, SHIELD, ATCU…_**

He was tall, and had a moustache Alvie could only describe as offensively excessive. "General Ross," he said, holding out his hand. "Please, call me Thaddeus."

"I don't think I'll be doing that," said Alvie, who had never been good at keeping her thoughts to herself.

"As you wish. Take a seat, Miss Kennings. I have some things I wish to discuss."

 _Figured that,_ thought Alvie. _This guy ain't exactly got people skills._

 _Does anyone in here, though? This is crazy HQ._

 _Fair point. But speaking of… where are all the other Avengers?_

"Sokovia," said Ross, steepling his fingers. "New York. London. New Mexico. Washington. As of a couple of weeks ago, Wakanda. And as of an hour or two ago, Vienna."

"What about 'em?"

Ross' bushy eyebrows lowered. "Think of the common denominator, Miss Kennings."

She pressed her teeth into her bottom lip. "Bad places for a vacation?"

"Ma'am, if you're not taking this seriously –"

"Superheroes," she said, cutting him off. "And collateral damage." _A_ lot _of collateral damage._

"Conflict has escalated into something beyond that which we can control. We've transferred some information to Athena," Ross began, and Alvie held up a hand.

 ** _The Sokovia Accords_**

 ** _A series of legislation regarding the registration and regulation of Enhanced and legal, privatised vigilante activity. UN-approved, the Accords aim to restrict the activities of so-called "superheroes" in order to minimise world terror threats that have escalated in recent years to an unprecedented level…_**

 _I do not want to be on this. I do not want people to know my face. If HYDRA hear that I'm Athena, then…_ she gulped. "I refuse," she said, rolling the baseball bat back and forth beneath the sole of her shoe.

"They're non-optional," Ross replied, and Alvie gripped the conference table with her slender, solder-blistered fingers. "But we can overlook certain individuals whose status as Enhanced is debatable, in return for their cooperation with the state in other matters."

"He's talking about you," Tony cut in.

 _Really? Thanks, asshole. I had no idea._

 _Just focus on what he's offering you, Kennings._

"What do you mean, Enhanced?" she asked. "I'm just an information broker."

"With a computer fully integrated into her brain, Miss Kennings, which, according to our records, you have publicly mentioned no less than fourteen times. Subtlety is not your strong point when it comes to demonstrating your assets."

"Right. So I'm a superhero now," she said scathingly, trying her best to appear casual by leaning back in her chair and putting her feet up on the table. _Good thing I remembered underwear with this skirt, today._ "And what kind of cooperation are you seeking from me?"

"No doubt you've heard of the explosion today in –"

"Nope," said Alvie, "I don't watch the news."

Ross glanced at Stark, who lifted a shoulder. "Well," he said, "all you need to know that it was an act of extremism, Miss Kennings. Of terror. And one which involved the Enhanced community most heavily."

 _Well, that explains why Stark's here. But where's the rest of the freakshow?_

"We know who is behind it," Ross continued, "at least… we're quietly confident. We have footage that pins him at the scene. And we need to locate him before he does this again. And to do that, we need someone of your skillset. We live in an age of technological omniscience, and that there is someone so aware of the entire grid that they have collected a reputation as being at one with it is an asset we cannot afford to lose."

"This sounds awfully like a bounty hunt to me," said Alvie. "You want mercenaries, sir. You want the ATCU and every god damn superhero you can put a collar on to do this. Not an information broker."

"We're thinking laterally," was all Ross said.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"All you need to know," Tony told her, "is that you're the best person for this job. The Avengers're too… involved. We need a third party, someone external to the Accords to do this. Keep it clean."

"And if I refuse?" Alvie asked. "I get consulted, Mr Ross. People come to me for information. They don't… _hire_ me."

"Then we put you on the Accords," said Ross.

 _Right. Shoulda realised that, huh?_

 _And Accords is pretty much synonymous with death sentence, what with the bastards on my tail. Not to mention that I'd be this guy's lapdog._

 _I miss my cherié. He would know what to do. This is his world, not mine._

 _Well, he's gone cold. So it's like the good ole days, Kennings. Just me and me._

"You're blackmailing me," she said to Ross, then turned to Tony. "And you're just… letting him do this? What does he have on you?"

"Nothing," Tony replied. "I _want_ this. I've flown too close to the sun."

"Not like you to admit that," she said. "You let me leave you before even so much as acknowledging your hubris. Christ, Tony. Is whatever you've done really so bad that you're willing to be put on a leash?"

"I created an AI that nearly tore this world and the people I love apart," Tony snapped. "The exact thing you _warned_ me would happen. I'm not some dumb kid anymore, Alvie, and neither are you. People like us, we have to be held responsible."

"I'm not like you."

"No, Miss Kennings," said Ross, "and that's what we're offering you. Your freedom, our trust, and the knowledge that you helped catch the world's currently most wanted terrorist before a lynch mob finds him."

Alvie stared down at her hands, still braced on the desk. She thought of the three people she had killed, of how terrified she was of doing that again, and almost understood why Tony was there. "Fine," she said, "fine. I'll do it. You got a deal, or whatever it is people say."

This time, when Ross held out his hand Alvie shook it. His skin was cold, and slightly clammy. "And remember, Miss Kennings. Go back on your word and the world will know your name. You'll be completely under the jurisdiction of the state, which means your position as an impartial unit would be compromised, to say the least."

"Yeah, yeah," she muttered, "I got that. So who is this guy with a price on his head?"

"For your consideration," Tony said, chucking an old-fashioned brown paper file across the table. Alvie opened it curiously, and it took every fibre of self-control not to lose it right there.

On the very first page of the file was a photo of Bucky.

 **A/N and we are back! Civil War was basically a dream come true for me, fic-wise, since it's so easy to incorporate Alvie into it without affecting canon in any way. My main problem was that, for obvious reasons, her and Bucky were obviously not going to be spending much time together this act, to which my solution was, like with OMAMM, alternate between the OC and the other character. Which means Bucky chapters! Lots of Bucky chapters! What else... I think (or at least hope) that my writing's got a bit better since Act One, and although it's about the same size in terms of word count this act is on a way larger scale - more characters, bigger plot, longer chapters etc. Over the hiatus, watching this fic continue to gain support was awesome and lovely and wonderful, and I love all of you.**

 **Additionally, I now have a fancast for Alvie: Natalie Morales (the Parks & Rec actress, not the news lady). Aside from that, all I can think to say is that updates will probably be regular-ish, and will of course contain spoilers for Civil War, as I said above. I hope you like it!**


	26. Act II Chapter II

**CHAPTER II**

Bucky liked Romania. He knew the language, it was cheap to live there, and people didn't ask questions. He had an apartment (small, with the windows covered with newspapers) and a next door neighbour (Doamna Iliescu, an old widow whom he carried shopping bags for whenever the elevator wasn't working, which was most days). There was a stray cat that was beginning to recognize him, and would mewl at his balcony door until he let it in and fed it. People didn't know his name, but they knew the quiet guy who kept to himself and nodded to him as he walked past. He had a job, manual labour that barely even paid pittance, and most surprisingly, there was a girl at the food market who kept giving him looks.

Bucky could remember the 1940s better than ever, but there was some stuff that was harder to recall than others. He was _fairly_ sure she liked him, because he could get stuff at her stall for half the price her father marked it down as, and she laughed whenever he said something. But he was used to Alvie, who had tended to be a bit more… forward. Still, cheap food was not to be sniffed at, and it was nice to be appreciated every once in a while.

When Bucky woke up that morning, sunlight was being turned yellow by the newspapers in the window and it felt a degree or two warmer in his flat than he was used to. _Spring,_ he thought, rolling off the uncovered mattress with a yawn and shuffling towards the kitchen. It had _technically_ been spring when he had moved east from Germany, but it had still been bloody cold. Now, it was only _fairly_ cold. He would only need about three shirts today.

 _Say what you want about HYDRA, but at least they understood thermal insulation,_ he thought foggily, switching on the faucet and waiting a second before water began to splutter out. He took a mouthful and splashing his face. The woman across the hall, who had a three-year-old son Bucky was _sure_ recognized him and yet had not decided to tell anyone, said that the tap water here wasn't healthy to drink, but he had survived more than badly purified Dâmbovița water. He yanked open the fridge door and pursed his lips as he saw that all he had in his possession was a half-empty bottle of ketchup and a lone egg. He opted for the egg, frying it until the diabetes was practically tangible, and leafed through the notebook as he ate.

The notebook… it had been Alvie's idea, surprisingly. She had said some things were easier to think about written down, and that was quite something when it came from a woman with a computer in her head. It had notes in it written in more languages than most people could speak, since Bucky wasn't aware what tongue he was thinking in half the time and anyway, it made it harder for other people to read. It had photos stuck inside of it, of Captain America and the Howling Commandos and the SSR's top agents, including one of Peggy Carter. Bucky could remember her, vaguely – a broad so fancy it felt wrong to call her that, in a red dress in a bar, that had completely blanked him in favor of his puppy-eyed best friend. Oh, yes. He remembered Peggy Carter, alright.

Closing the book – which contained everything he knew about himself – with a snap, Bucky searched his cupboards and produced, in addition to the ketchup, two candy bars, a tin of kidney beans that looked as though they had belonged to the previous owner, an half a bag of weird preserved fruit stuff that Doamna Iliescu had traded him for a bottle of vodka. He left the bean tin in the cupboard, should it make a suitable weapon in the undetermined future, left the notebook, candy and fruit on top of the fridge, and hunted around the room for any remaining clean laundry. He showered and dressed before heading out of the dank apartment block and towards the market.

Necessities first, then to the baker's stall where the girl batted her eyelashes at him, then the junk stand. There was a faded cassette tape in there of a Prince song – Al liked that kind of music, right? Slender, androgynous men who looked and sounded like they came from a different planet. He paid the junk lady and tucked the cassette into the back pocket of his jeans. If and when he next saw her, she would have to at least appreciate the effort. Onto to the fruit man, whose table was a cornucopia of springtime. There were plums, fat and purple, unseasonably early for the time of the year – but the fruit man was not a teenage girl, and drove a hard bargain with Bucky. He was so absorbed in the transaction that he didn't notice the man staring at him from the newspaper stand for a good few seconds.

Keeping his head low, Bucky abandoned the fruit and stepped back – yes, the man's eyes definitely followed him, and made no secret of it either. So if he wasn't being subtle, he wasn't a spook – but then why did he recognize him?

Bucky walked past nonchalantly, then crossed the street. When he made eye contact with the man his face slackened and he bolted, fumbling with a mobile phone as he legged it through the market, and Bucky darted forward to grab one of the papers on his desk. A picture of carnage adorned the front page, and below it there was another photo, a blurry image of a face he would not have been able to recognize until very recently – _him._ Oh, shit. What had he done now?

A few words jumped out of the page at him. _Răzbunători._ Avengers. _Suveran._ King. _Acorduri._ Accords. _Terorism_. _Barnes_. _"The death toll, as of publication, has risen to…"_

 _I didn't do this._ He would remember, if he had. He remembered every name of the people he had killed if he had been told them, every face if he had seen them. There were others too, people he had taken out without knowing anything about them but their location at a certain point and how quickly they bled out. When he remembered them, when they came in the nightmares, they were the worst ones: nothing more than shadows, whispering his name.

He could remember nothing of King T'Chaka, or the others killed. If they had made him do it and wiped his memory, he still would have known that name. He did not do this.

Which begged the question of, who did? And why had they framed him? And why do it in the first place?

 _Not my problem,_ he thought flatly, dumping the newspaper into an overflowing trash can. _Don't run. Not yet._ That was the first rule – innocent people don't run. But, thinking ahead, Bucky amended it slightly – innocent people don't run until people start shooting at them. Then, it was just common sense to leg it, right?

 _They haven't found me._ That was something, at least – there must be thousands of reports and false claims flooding the counter-terrorism hotlines right now, and nobody would believe the newspaper man amongst all of that. _Lay low. See what happens. And hope to hell that Alvie's still got me covered._

 **A/N I mean... I couldn't just leave you with one chapter, could I? I also really want to write a oneshot about the unlikely friendship of Bucky Barnes and Doamna Iliescu. I'll post it in The Civilian Files if I ever get round to it.**


	27. Act II Chapter III

**CHAPTER III**

Alvie bit her tongue all the way through the rest of the meeting. By the time she left the building, she could taste blood in her mouth. She got back in her car, turned the radio up to full volume, and got all the way out onto the highway looking like the perfect picture of sanity.

 _Then_ she started screaming.

"Idiot!" she yelled, "god damn crazy ass _idiot!_ What have I _done?!_ Bucky's gonna kill me! He's gonna kill me and then he'll break up with me!"

 _Call Bucky._

 ** _Connecting._**

 _Is that really a good idea?_ she asked herself as the phone rang. _What am I gonna say? 'Hey, babe, how's it going, yeah I saw they're pinning that terrorist attack on you, hahah yeah crazy right, anyways, I'm kinda working for the government that wants to arrest you so if ya feel like dropping any hints as to your current location, I'm SURE Ross can be completely one hundred percent trusted…_

 ** _Bucky is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone._**

"BEEP!" the computer screamed into her ear, and Alvie winced. _Gotta fix that._

"Uh…" she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "Cherié, just calling to say that you were on the news in case you hadn't, um, hadn't noticed… I'm worried about you, so if ya could just, like, call me when you get this. I mean, you're probably kinda busy right now, but just a message'd be fine, really. Good luck not getting arrested. There's absolutely nothing important I need to tell you, nosir, nothing at all… okayloveyoubye!"

 ** _Call ended._**

Alvie took a deep breath, then: "'good luck not getting arrested'?! _SERIOUSLY?!"_

 _I'm insane. I am completely bat-crap crazy._

 _You're overreacting is what you are, Kennings._

She laughed disbelievingly. _This is not a situation it is possible to overreact in! I could be waving a rocket launcher around and screaming about how crazy the government is and that would still probably be a measured response! Oh, bloody hell._

 _Right – set up algorithm on 50% of external servers for facial and voice recognition on global surveillance, highest to lowest security levels. Monitor news and social media for key words and phrases: "winter soldier", "UN (attack", "terror(ist/ism)", "bucky barnes", "avengers", what else… infiltrate Avenger databases to highest possible level and sweep for red documents, monitor suspected HYDRA activity, um…_ she pinched the bridge of her nose, and the Ghia swerved perilously close to the neighboring lane. A car horn blared at her as it went past.

"Honk yourself, asshole!" she yelled out of the open window.

 _File activity under new project name: Finding Bucky._

 ** _Project "Finding Bucky" initiated._**

 _Come on, lost boy. Where are you?_

 ** _NEGATIVE – negative – NO RESULTS FOUND – lack of data – Negative – correlation: 0%..._**

Athena was running every check on every camera and every news page and every social network site _in the entire goddamn_ world, and was drawing a complete blank – save, of course, for every false alarm that was coming in from people paranoid that they were about to become the next UN. Surely he couldn't have left Germany, or she would have found some trace of him at a customs office. But this was Europe, where countries all had the same currency and you could drive through a completely different nation without even noticing. Trying to think about it analytically wasn't helping at all.

And, to top it all off, he still wasn't answering his phone.

 _Maybe he knows. He knows I'm looking for him._

 _Of course he doesn't know. How could he know? Only Stark and Ross and me know, it's all off the books._

 _But he's smart. He could figure out it was me, easy. He would guess that they would come to me first…_

 _And he would probably also guess that I'd refuse._

She reached the main road, but instead of taking the turning towards home something possessed her and she found herself on the highway to the city. Alvie didn't much like New York; it was loud and fast and smelly and busy, meaning she got a headache if she stayed out for too long and had already had two complete freak-outs when caught in a crowd of people. She missed her old city, tucked away in one of the quieter New England states, where the sidewalks had been wide and clean and she knew where everything was, with no surplus or unnecessary things. Her house was big and silent, but that came at a cost of it being in the middle of nowhere and now, Alvie spent most days jetting up and down the highway to the city in her Ghia. Here, there was everything she could need and more, and the sensory overload was unreal. She stayed in New York for if and when Bucky returned, and for the coffee shop her friend Eva worked in.

But today, she did not head for Manhattan. Instead, she beat the taxis at the traffic light races and pulled up outside a low-slung apartment block, with two men lounging inconspicuously on the front steps as they read their newspapers.

 _What am I doing?_ she thought, parking across the street. _Last time I came here,_ she _kicked me out and said it was too personal to be business._

As a reply, the straight-thinking part of her brain took control of her hand and used it to pull out the file on Bucky that Ross had given her. Tucked inside there was a letter of commission, signed by the secretary himself, that was technically a secret and didn't even exist. _Always get a signature,_ she thought to herself, _you don't get much more businessy than this._

She took the file with her and crossed the street, and only managed one step before one of the inconspicuous men barred her way. Up close, he looked a lot more conspicuous, with tattoos and big muscles. He was also, curiously, reading the _Financial Times._

"Where d'you think you're going?" he asked her, as his equally intimidating friend marked his page in his battered copy of _Pride and Prejudice_ and cracked his knuckles in a friendly sort of way.

"I'm here to see your boss," she said. "You know, the kingpin?"

"Got an appointment?"

"No. But it's about the UN attack."

The two big men exchanged glances. "You're late," said the reader of the _FT._

"Huh?"

He took her arm and pulled her roughly inside, leading her through the shadowy corridors, up one flight of stairs and down another until she was thoroughly discombobulated. Eventually they reached an ante-room, and the man hammered on a wooden door with a bronze plaque that read, very simply, _Mouse._

"Show her in, Jack," a female voice called out, and the man shoved her inside before slamming the door behind him. Alvie shrunk under the scrutinising stare of the woman sat at the messy desk.

"Thought you'd be here an hour ago," smiled Mouse. She had an English accent, but it was faint and difficult to place at first.

She was pretty big in the criminal underworld, was this woman, although nobody had heard of her until a couple of years ago. She had risen to prominence by founding and running the Rats, a guild of homeless women who made better spies and informants than the CIA's top agent. Nobody so much as went to the bathroom in New York without Mouse knowing, and they said that the Rats were in other cities now, too. If the proper authorities had known anything about it, they would have been exceedingly worried.

It was easy to see where Mouse had got her name from, and not just because there was a little white rodent curled up asleep on top of a pile of papers on her desk. She was small and thin with a pointed, clever face and black eyes that pinned Alvie down, eyes that were dark and unfathomable. Athena got nothing on the facial recognition scan. Alvie was not surprised.

"Why?" Alvie asked, "what d'you know?"

"That, Miss Kennings, the man you begged me to find a few months ago is now apparently the murderer of the king of Wakanda and a few other innocent, ha, politicians that had convened in Vienna. I know that, as of an hour ago, you were enjoying the company of Stark and Ross at the Avengers HQ upstate. And I can see Ross' signature on that paper you are clutching so tightly in your left hand, which I assume you were going to use to convince me that you are, this time, a legitimate customer." Mouse extended a hand. "May I?"

Alvie handed over the letter, along with the file in her right hand. Mouse's lips moved as she read the former. "So _you're_ Athena," she said softly. "I guess you want that to be kept a secret. Don't worry, Miss Kennings. We're offline here, completely unhackable. Does James Buchanan Barnes know that you're leading the manhunt for him?"

"No."

Mouse laughed. "You could give _Coronation Street_ a run for its money. This is one hell of a mess you've found yourself in, huh?"

"Can you find him?"

"Already looked," said Mouse, "not in any of my areas of jurisdiction, so I'd hazard a guess at somewhere in Eastern Europe. Especially if he did what everyone is saying he did."

"You think he didn't?"

Mouse lifted a shoulder, and said nothing. "Don't matter what I think. What about you, Miss Kennings? Reckon he found a spare packet of Semtex and thought, what the hell, it's Saturday?"

"No!" Alvie burst out. "Bucky would never do something like that! He would never even be _seen_ doing it! There's CCTV and they're acting like that's irrefutable proof, like SHIELD hasn't had digital mask technology for years! The file says he's got precedent – of course he hasn't got bloody precedent! What's the point in blowing up the UN when he came in from the cold years ago? The Winter Soldier doesn't get caught on CC-freaking-TV! Of _course_ he didn't do it!"

Mouse grinned, a proper knife-slash of a grin that flashed with a silver tooth. "Then I hope for your sake you find him before the new king T'Challa does," she said. "I'll keep an eye out for you."

"Thank you."

"What can I say? I'm a pillar of the community." Mouse flicked through the file. "I'm keeping this."

"But –" Alvie began, and the other woman raised an eyebrow. "… Okay. Can I have the letter back, though?"

"Sure." Mouse held it out, and as she did a new alert flashed up from Athena.

 ** _Checking: security footage quadrant 5446, key word search via social media- 0 relevant results, security footage quadrant 5447- manual verification required._**

 _That's not him._

 ** _Search continuing_**

Alvie took the letter and stuffed it into her bra. "You know we had HYDRA in here asking about him a while back, right?" Mouse asked her, and she froze. "Don't worry, we make a point of not serving Nazis. There's others looking for him too – Leviathan, some old Soviet countries. He's quite the prom queen when it comes to popularity."

"The whole world wants his head for one reason or another," Alvie said.

Mouse steepled her fingers under her chin and leant back in her chair. "How did this happen, Alvine Kennings? How did a girl like you end up in a mess like this?"

She flushed. "It's business now, isn't it? _I'm_ not a concern. What do you even want?"

"Ideally," said Mouse, "a Socialist president, but that's beside the point. Let me guess – you find him, or Ross puts your name on the Accords." Alvie nodded. "Why? What's your special secret? No – don't tell me, I'd rather not know. Anyway… let me offer you some free advice, lady. Watch your back. Your name isn't on the Accords, but don't think Ross isn't using you." Mouse's position, the steepled fingers, reminded Alvie of evil villains, the cleverer calibre of politician and other such People of Interest. "You're playing with the big kids now, lady, and they don't play nice."

"I'm not used to nice anyway." Alvie stood up. "Here's your money," she said, throwing a bundle of cash on the table. "Tell me the minute you find him."

Mouse picked up the wad of bills and ran her thumbnail over the top of them. "I like you, Miss Kennings," she said. "You have the potential to be very… entertaining. But you're in Rome now, and doing as the Romans would might get you in an awful lot of trouble. So for the good of everyone, try not to fuck up."

%

An hour later Alvie was home again. It was crazy to think that it was still only early afternoon, that all this had happened over the course of one morning. It was equally insane that she _hadn't bloody found anything yet._

 ** _NEGATIVE – no response – SCAN FAILED – 0% crossmatch – negative –_**

"Shit!" she yelled at her empty house, "I know why I can't find him! I'm an idiot! _Ha!_ "

 _You know the thing? The thing I did ages ago, just after we came to New York?_

 _A lot of things happened then, Kennings._

 ** _Covert mode identified._**

 _I set it to hide both our tracks, and I never turned it off for him. I've been hiding him from everyone, including me._

 ** _Deactivate full covert mode for Bucky?_**

She faltered. This was what had been keeping Bucky safe… if she became able to find him, then who else would? HYDRA, governments, the Avengers… people knew about the Winter Soldier now, and he was not a popular man. Hell, she was helping to "bring him to justice" even now.

That was the kick; she _had_ to do this. There wasn't any freedom involved here- there was a gun to her head being held by Stark and Ross. It was her duty to her country, or some shit. She had to do it to save herself.

Besides – she was faster and cleverer than the lot of them. She would find him before they did.

 _Deactivate covert mode for Bucky._

 ** _Covert mode deactivated._**

 _God, I'm a terrible person. What else is new?_

 ** _44 unread messages. Automatic "Finding Bucky" data-mining has so for yielded 0 positive results._**

 _Well, it was a rhetorical question but thanks anyway, Athena._ Alvie cracked her knuckles and yawned, her brain buzzing with adrenaline and the whirr of the computers snugly fitted around it. When was the last time she had slept? When Ross had summoned her, she had yet to go to bed that day. God, she was tired.

"Alright," she said aloud. "So if Athena isn't going to manage this, we'll have to be able to think about this like Alvie. Or at least, like Alvie thinking like Bucky."

 _Last thing I knew, he was in Germany. That narrows it down some. He won't have stayed there for long, though. He'll have gone east, as soon as it got warm enough to move cross-country._

The first thing an idiot does when they go on the run is disappear into the countryside to an abandoned farm or whatever. If you want to hide, you go to a city, where you're just another face among millions, and where he can get some kind of cheap labour work that won't get him noticed. So, a city in Europe near Germany… one reasonably close to public transport centers like airports and train stations in case you need to make a quick getaway. Not Norway or any other of the big countries, though… that would be too obvious… No, he would have gone low-key, a less developed place that was unable to afford security cameras on each corner. A capital city, one with big amenities and lots of people to hide behind.

Well, it wasn't like she didn't have people out looking for her. Half of Europe was claiming they had seen Bucky Barnes, that he lived next door, that he had bought their car, kicked their dog; she just had to sift through the bullshit.

And where would he live? Not homeless, not for such a long period of time. No, he would have settled somewhere by now – and it wouldn't be in a semi-detached, either. Apartment blocks had the same advantages as crowds, plus they were pretty much fortresses of the sky. He would be anonymous and protected in one of those. Again, a building close to the roads and tracks, a level not too high to get out of the window but not too low, either…

 _Make a list of apartments with rent paid in cash that have been taken in the last year in the locations that meet those parameters._

 ** _Three hundred possibilities across 8 countries._**

 _Check private security footage._ Before now, she had only been looking in public areas.

 ** _Zero results._**

 _Damn. Check to see if any security footage in those possibilities has been lost. He can't avoid 'em forever, but if my algorithm or he wiped the footage, then…_

 ** _No facial matches detected._**

 _Then… come on, Kennings, don't give up now… Then apartments with good escape routes. Near the stairwell or the fire escape, a window he can survive a fall from. And take a normal human's mortality chances and reduce them by sixty percent, he's got that supersoldier stuff in him. He can survive more than most. Look for apartments with covered up windows, a balcony with a heavy door. Small. Somewhere with a bit of crime itself, so people won't ask questions._

 ** _One possibility: Bucharest, Romania. Apartment with window overlooking roof of nearby building with estimated reach. Situated in Sector 2 (Colentina Borough), second most densely populated area and away from main tourist attractions: chances of recognition 24% less than par. Rented under a name with no supporting documents. No associated vehicles._**

 _That's him. I found him. Call Ross._

Athena set up a video link. Ross was in a different conference room now, the skyline of DC behind him and important-looking people in suits around him. Her grandmother had always said that, where there were white men in suits, there would be trouble.

Oh, and she would make sure there would be trouble here today.

"Gentlemen," she said, "I have your man."

Ross' moustache curved upwards. "Excellent! If you can just send me the –"

"Don't worry, Mr Secretary," she said, "I'm sending the information to _all_ the relevant authorities as we speak."

His face froze like it had just hit a glitch. "Athena," he said, "I thought we said –"

"Oh, you said I couldn't tell anybody else I was looking. But the information is mine, sir. I have to give it to you, sure, but apart from that it's mine to do with as I wish. And I wish for this little fact to be free for those who need it. That counter-terrorism task force looks useful, doesn't it? Sharon Carter works there, apparently. Niece of the war hero. Runs in the family – I'm sure _she'll_ appreciate the tip-off, along with many others. Oh, I hope this very important secret doesn't get leaked. Wouldn't that be _awful?_ "

 _With any luck it'll get to people who oppose the Accords,_ she thought, _and the police. But I trust the police more than I do_ these _guys._

"Oh, I'm sorry – I thought this was a free country," she said with her most innocent smile. "Or had you forgotten that, Mr Secretary? And I suggest you send your toy soldiers out now, since as soon as I started looking for him there were people hot on my tail and making tracks of their own. This, Mr Secretary, is a bona fide Cold War race to see who can reach him first. And Captain America's a pretty quick runner, ya hear me?"

She could see the rage flaring in Ross' eyes, but he was bound to behave by the people in the room with him.

 _Does he know? Does he know that there's a reason I don't want him to find him?_

"We had an agreement, Athena."

"And I didn't go back on my word, sir. I sure as hell hope you don't, either, because the government really seems to be clamping down on accountability for actions, now." The men in suits were panicking, their Armani silk feathers heavily ruffled by the weird-looking, dark-skinned girl with the crazy grin on the other side of the screen. "Is there a problem?"

"You little –"

"Thought so." She blinked and the connection died.

Out of the frying pan and into the blazing inferno, then. She should have been focusing on how much trouble she must have just caused, but instead all she could think about was one thing.

 _Call the bastard._

 ** _Bucky currently unav –_**

"Drat! Drat and damn!" She stood up and ran to the window, struggling to open it and sticking her head out to gasp down lungfuls of pollen-laced air in an attempt to stop her head swimming. _They're hunting him. They'll find him._

 _But I got there first._

Wind whipped at her hair, wind dusty from navigating the skyscrapers to the south. The world was hunting for Bucky Barnes, now. She had just opened a Pandora's Box of super-problems, and something told her this was a long way from being over.

 **A/N I never wanted to do that thing where it feels like I'm shoehorning another OC from the same universe in, but it occurred to me while writing that it would be weird for Alvie** ** _not_** **to approach Mouse when looking for somebody. One day, possible during the Infinity Wars timeline, I will write a fic that involves all three of my civilians together, generally arguing and trying not to get killed by stray superheroes. And if you liked Mouse and haven't read Of Mice And Mischief Makers, then you should. She's great, in an arguably malicious kind of way.**


	28. Act II Chapter IV

**CHAPTER IV**

The policeman arresting Bucky was not gentle, and he ended up getting a mouthful of tarmac as his head got slammed into the ground. Lights popped over his vision as they dragged him into an armored truck, smacking him again with the butt of a gun until he went limp. Vices were wrapped around him, forcing him into a sitting position where he could barely move a finger, and he found himself trapped in a glass cage.

The policemen were sent away, replaced by two SWAT guys with guns that they kept trained on Bucky, one for each eyeball. He glared sullenly at them as the truck lurched into action. The cassette tape was still in his back pocket though, miraculously unnoticed and unbroken by the police when they frisked him for weapons. It had to be fate, right? If that was even a thing.

Thinking about Alvie brought him dangerously close to breaking his poker face, and he tried to turn his mind to something else. The cat guy with the claws came to mind – more specifically, how close those claws had come to Bucky's eyeballs. It was likely that they had been vibranium, since when Bucky had hit him the man's suit, although tight, had absorbed practically all of the force and sent it reverberating back up his own arm. Only vibranium could do something like that. Something similar had happened years ago, when he had landed a punch on Steve's shield and felt it all the way up the metal of his arm and into his shoulder.

And Steve… Steve had genuinely thought that Bucky was going to kill him. Admittedly he had already attempted to a few times, and Bucky had just completely denied any memory of him, but still, it had kind of stung. He should probably make more of an effort, especially after the captain and his friend had just been arrested because of him. _For_ him. Shit. Why couldn't they just leave him alone? He had been completely fine in Romania. His only link outside of the country was Alvie and the phone she had given him, but the first thing he had done upon hearing of the UN attack was smash it in his fist and chuck it in the Colentina River. Al would no doubt be going out of her mind, but he would rather that then have her linked to him, a supposed terrorist. But he had been _safe._ He had practically been a _civilian._

One of the guards, who was clearly tiring of the tough guy role, mumbled something about forgetting to load his gun in Romanian. Who the hell even did that? " _Idiot,"_ Bucky said under his breath, which was one of the few glorious words that tended to be the exact same regardless of language. The guard kicked the glass of his cage.

" _Sa-mi sugi pula,_ _asasin."_ That last one was another universal. The vitriol behind the rest of the phrase made it clear that, even if Bucky had not been able to understand it, it was not a compliment. He resisted the urge to retort with something about the man's mother, which was definitely a Bucky Barnes impulse and not a Winter Soldier one, and merely continued to glare. After a while, he could see the man getting unsettled, and felt a small spark of satisfaction.

The Winter Soldier… the first and the best, although there had been others. Where were they now? He had no desire to find out, and certainly no loyalty to them. Back in the Siberian base, he didn't even see them between when they went under the same experiments he had and by the time they had completed training. And then, for the entertainment of the guards, they had fought.

Oh, how they had fought – like gladiators, like dogs, like hungry, feral dogs being bet on by their owners. Dogs who knew that if they did not win they would die either by the hand of their opponent or their handler. Bucky remembered his odds on winning for a bout between twenty-four, clear as day. Even when he had forgotten his name he had remembered the odds, the closest to anything he had to be proud of. In a pool of twenty-four, the odds on him winning were 8/1. When he won, when they dragged him away from the others' prone bodies, the number of Winter Soldiers had dropped to twenty-two, and Bucky had had skin under his nails and someone else's blood in his mouth. One of the guards, one who must have liked the look of 8/1 odds, had grabbed him and kissed him as others had counted out their money with sour expressions. His lips had tasted like liquor, and it had seared the memory of the night into Bucky's head like a white-hot brand.

How many times had that happened?

His head was starting to hurt, the sharp stabbing that came with the more unpleasant, easier-to-recall memories. The harder ones were from before he fell, and they were accompanied by a dull ache, like how fog would feel if it were a form of pain. But now it was knives, and the taste of other people's booze and other people's blood. Bucky didn't drink much – he knew some people drunk to forget, but for him it only made him remember. There was a trigger for everything, though. Even the smell of pine trees made him want to scream. The brain was a curious and treacherous thing, his more than most.

What memories didn't hurt? A few from before he had even been recruited as a sergeant, when he was a kid – HYDRA could make him forget that far, but they couldn't make the memories of a child painful. Sat in a hospital with Steve, watching his friend get stitched up as another nurse cleaned his own knuckles while, in the ward next door, the bully lay unconscious. His mother, scrubbing the front step of the apartment until it gleamed because soapy water was one of the few things she could afford. His first kiss: outside the school gates, from Millie Edwards in the grade above, him having to rise onto his toes to reach her lips, which tasted like strawberries.

His last kiss: Alvie in a New York harbor, her thigh still wrapped in bandages and her lips hot and hungry, Mama Cass playing in the background. Not her favorite song. And then he came full circle, returning to the Prince tape in his back pocket.

Whatever happened next, he needed to stay calm. _Don't fight. Don't run. Don't even speak. Don't give them anything, not a single word._ Only two things mattered: he was Bucky Barnes, and he was innocent.

Oh. And if anyone tried to get the Prince tape off of him, he would break both their legs.

 **A/N man oh man writing Bucky Barnes is as fun as it is difficult**


	29. Act II Chapter V

**CHAPTER V**

"Hey. It's just a nightmare, Al. Look at me. You're okay. Look at me."

Alvie opened her eyes as Bucky pushed her hair back from her face, metal fingers cold on her clammy skin. "What was I doing?" she asked him, still feeling scared from a dream that had already escaped her memory.

"Doesn't matter. You're okay now. What are you?"

"I'm okay," she whispered, and he kissed her. Something about the dangerous man that was Bucky Barnes made her feel safe, and she pulled herself closer to him to strengthen the feeling. "Sorry for waking you up."

He smiled crookedly, and she brushed her thumb along his narrow lips, his stubble catching on her skin. She'd missed that smile. "You can make it up to me later."

His arms went downwards, pushing away feather-soft bedsheets and wrapping around her waist. "I miss you," she said. "Oh, _cherié_ , they made me do such a terrible thing."

"You had to do it?" Bucky asked, gaze fixed on her like she would disappear if he looked away. His eyes were the same blue-gray they had always been, the color of oiled gun metal, but they had a trace of softness in them now. A softness that _she_ had caused. "You had to tell them where I was?"

Alvie nodded. "They would've made me common knowledge with the Accords if I didn't, and then HYDRA'll find me in a heartbeat. There's about a dozen heads now, none of them know the others exist, but they're everywhere. And they'll all find out about me."

"You're playing their game," Bucky said, moving his weight so that he was on top of her. "Acting how they want you to."

"You sound like that Mouse woman," she mumbled, "going on about doing as the Romans would. It doesn't feel like I'm in Rome, Bucky. It feels like I'm in Wonderland, and I'm Alice. I don't have a clue."

"Then don't play," he said, and kissed her again. "You wouldn't be the only one."

"What – just leave?" she asked dubiously. "Bucky, I can't. I can't turn my back on this, not now. Not without you. You know I can't, you know me."

"Better than anyone," he murmured. His next kiss sent fire speeding from her lips straight into the pit of her stomach, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. "I know you don't think like they do. So don't act like you're one of them, Al. You're not. That's why I love you."

"But you're just a dream," she breathed. He sat up and pulled her into his lap in one fluid movement, holding her waist with one arm and hooking the other round her back and over her shoulder. God, he was beautiful. So broken, and so perfect. "Dreams don't count."

 _Then wake up,_ a rough voice said in her head, even as Bucky's mouth was otherwise engaged. _It'll be okay._ She wrapped her legs tightly around his hips, kissing with a ferocity that came from not needing to breathe. She was in a dream, after all. She could do whatever the hell she wanted, and what she wanted to do was _him._

The metal of her arm had heated from the warmth of her skin, now, and it gripped her so tightly it almost hurt. She did not close her eyes; she took every moment she could to drink in his features, unreal as they were.

 _I love you._

"I love you," Alvie echoed, as he buried his face in the crook of her neck.

 _You'll be okay._

She woke up with a yelp, grasping at the cold floorboards of the attic. _I'm alone,_ she told herself, wrapping her arms around her torso. _It was just a dream. I'll be okay. Bucky... Bucky's in Berlin. He's not here._ It was freezing up there – she realised she had left the bottom portion of the circular window open, so now the cold night air had crept in and settled like frost over everything.

 _Thanks, dream boyfriend who I've got into a total shitstorm._ Alvie rubbed her eyes and groaned. Still, at least it was a nice dream, not a nightmare. She didn't get nightmares often, thank God; no, Bucky always had more than enough for the both of them. Alvie supposed she had that to be grateful for. She remembered one of his with a shudder…

 _"Tell me," she said quietly. It was their second night in Brooklyn, and they were sleeping on cold floorboards. "Tell me what happened. Who was it this time?"_

 _For once, Bucky didn't argue. "They called 'em search and destroys," he said, sat upright with his elbows on his knees and staring, not at her, but at the peeling wallpaper. "They give me an address, I eliminate everyone inside of it. No questions, no exceptions. It was an embassy, I think. American names in Zagreb. I go in there at one in the morning and shoot him where he's sleeping in the chair by the fire. The wife was hiding – she came up behind me with a kitchen knife."_

 _Alvie watched Bucky as, while speaking, he traced a floor plan into the dust of the apartment with his finger. It was startling, how well he could remember it. He put a cross through the dot that had been in the kitchen, and dragged his finger over to the staircase. It was his metal index, and it left grooves in the floorboard._

 _"I go upstairs," he said, "they didn't mention anyone else – they didn't give me anything, no number of residents, only an address – and check the other rooms. The servants were out. I didn't need to worry about them." He traced another floor plan, and drew a line up the hallway to the farthest room. "I go inside. And the walls are blue, and there's… there's race cars on them. And a night light. Still turned on."_

 _"What did you do?"_

 _Bucky shook his head, and bit down on the back of his wrist. He was crying, Alvie saw – his eyes were too bright, his shoulders tensed to stop them shaking. "Why'd you make me tell you?"_

 _"Because once you tell someone your nightmares, they go away," she explained, not wanting to touch him. She knew he hated to show weakness – better for both of them if they ignored that elephant in the room. "I wanna help. If I can help them stop haunting you, then…"_

 _"We'd run out of nights before I ran out of nightmares," Bucky said, and Alvie pretended to look away as he wiped his eyes._

 _"But I'm still not letting you go through this alone."_

Yes – it wasn't much fun to be Alvie Kennings right now, but at least she wasn't Bucky Barnes.

 _That doesn't make me feel much better._ Rubbing her eyes, she checked the avalanche of messages that had been sent to Athena in the last 48 hours. Most of them were from people who had heard she was trying to find Bucky and, having not heard he was already secured, were trying to "help"; she trashed them and moved onto the more immediately concerning ones.

 ** _One new message from: Tony Stark_**

 ** _"Nice work, Acid Burn. I hope you're proud of yourself."_**

Oh, dear. She could sense the sarcasm radiating off of the message, and Tony only ever used nicknames when he was annoyed with someone or, in this case, blinded with rage.

 _You'd better watch your back, Bucky Barnes. I'm not sure I can protect it for much longer._

 **A/N this act was written while listening to (as well as Prince and Bowie, naturally) Amanda Palmer's Theatre Is Evil and Beyoncé's Lemonade on repeat, and honestly there is no better soundtrack for writing the hot, badass, completely bonkers mess that is Alvie Kennings.**


	30. Act II Chapter VI

**CHAPTER VI**

The three very large men stared at the '67 Beetle Steve had managed to procure. It seemed to get smaller the longer they looked at it.

"Cap," said Wilson after a pregnant pause, "we're not gonna fit in that. One of us could barely fit in that. Cram all three of us in there and the chassis'll break."

"It'll be fine," Steve replied, slightly too cheerfully. "And if you're gonna talk about her like that, I'm driving."

"Shotgun," Wilson said immediately, just as Bucky went to do the same.

"Shotg - _fuck_!"

"I'm gonna make a call," Sam said, "see if Barton can run a car pool, because I doubt Lang can get here on his own."

"There's a payphone across the street," Steve told him.

"That's where I'm going. Gimme five minutes."

"No longer." Sam disappeared around the corner. "Buck, listen. I'm sorry I - what're you doing?"

Bucky gave the Beetle's radio a yank and it burst out of the dashboard, wire still trailing out like innards and connecting it to the battery. "Making a call," he replied, pulling a switchblade out of his pocket and snapping one of the wires.

"Where'd you get a knife?"

Bucky ignored him for a moment, now stripping the ends of the wire of its plastic casing before switching on the radio and beginning to retune it. "Don't ask stupid questions."

"Fine. But who are you calling?"

"Girlfriend," Bucky said, now catching snatches of an American accent on the radio. He left it tuned between two stations and gave the loose wires an experimental tap; a hum of noise burst out of the speakers as the copper connected, bypassing his ears and going straight to rattling his teeth.

"Last time I heard someone say that, it was Barton. Turned out he had an entire family hidden away. Got anything you need to tell me?"

"You're right," said Bucky, "I'm married. There's a wife and three kids waiting for me in Moscow."

"Hilarious," Steve said.

Bucky counted on his fingers as he figured out the encoded message. One wrong bleep, and it would be gibberish. Lucky for him Morse and tap codes were so familiar they almost felt like innate knowledge at this point, such were the requirements of his past life. _One_ of his past lives. "I was always the funny one."

"Keep telling yourself that. Bucky, I really am sorry that we've ended up here."

"Figured that," Bucky said vaguely, now tapping the wires together in a seemingly random pattern. "Shut up for a minute."

Alvie... even with the world looking for him, only one person could have tracked him down to the accuracy of his apartment, and that was Athena. At least Steve had found him first, but if Alvie knew where he was then there was a fairly good chance that she was about to do, or had already done, something stupid. He wouldn't expect anything less of her. A while back he had run out of battery on his phone and had not had access to anywhere to charge it, and thus had been unable to contact her for a couple weeks. She had ended up trying to enlist one of the kingpins from the New York mob to track him down. Thank God _that_ amazing plan hadn't worked out for her.

Bucky missed her, more than he had expected to. He missed the way she talked, and her cooking, and her kisses. He missed having someone to focus on other than himself, and someone being there when the nightmares came. Ideally, he would get her over here, where he could keep an eye on her, but now more than ever that wouldn't be safe. Part of him felt like he should have some stronger feelings about her selling him out, but he had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't entirely voluntary – and if she thought that what he had done as the Winter Soldier wasn't his fault, then he could hardly blame her for this. No… it wouldn't make sense to be mad at her. Besides, it unnerved him when she was upset, as she would of course be if he did not understand or forgive her for her actions. Alvie Kennings should only ever be happy. God help the world if she ever became enraged.

He finished the message, tuned the radio back to German and shoved it back into the dash. "Done."

"Right. And who was the message really for?"

"I told you," Bucky said. "Girlfriend." Steve gave him a disbelieving look, which was just the way Bucky liked it. Sometimes, the easiest way to lie was just to tell the truth.

"What happened back there? I mean, I know what _happened,_ but… how?"

Bucky slammed the door of the Beetle, the impact making the window rattle. "They, uh, they have these words they use to… reset me, I guess." He gulped. _Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak…_ best not to try and recall the rest. "I forgot they even existed. That must've been what the shrink used."

"You mean you –"

"I blacked out," he said shortly. It wasn't anywhere close to being an accurate description to the sensation, the rushing of pain so white-hot and agonising it felt like his body was being scourged, followed by a gray, silent bliss through which he could only think in a certain direction. The complete loss of independent thought beyond where to throw the next punch, where to aim the next bullet. The lack of any emotion except anger, concentrated and fossilized into something harder than diamond.

Again. He had tried to kill Steve _again._ Now, Bucky was having trouble looking him in the eye. But here his friend was, and Wilson too, risking their lives and reputations for him. He really wasn't worth that much, was he? Not two good men?

Sam turned up before Steve could ask any more questions. "He'll pick Lang up," Wilson told them. "They'll be here with Wanda by tomorrow morning. You heard from Sharon?"

"She said she'll meet us in Loberstrasse."

Bucky couldn't help but wince at the butchered pronunciation. "I know it," he said. He knew most places east of the Berlin wall. "Who's Sharon? Girlfriend?"

"No," Steve said, as Sam grinned. "Just... a friend."

"She cute?" Bucky asked Sam, who nodded.

"Very."

"Brunette?"

"Blonde."

"Huh."

"You were the one who preferred brunettes," Steve said, with a note of accusation. An image of Alvie flitted across his mind, twisting her short hair back into a knot to keep it away from her face. Brown, yes, licked through with gold like seafoam on waves, thick and heavy with overlong bangs. Burnt ends where it fell in front of the blowtorch or soldering iron.

"Did I ever say I didn't?" Bucky asked. "Come on."

"What happened to the radio?" Sam said.

"Don't ask."

 **A/N God. That VW Beetle, man. To paraphrase my friend, that Beetle does for me what motorcycles do for most people in terms of vehicle-related sex appeal. On another note, I've been in a '67 Beetle and it was cramped enough as it was, so I can only assume that the only way the Civil War crew managed to fit three ripped specimens of mankind into one was by building it up from the floor around them. The Beetle was inarguably the greatest character in that movie. I want a spin-off about it.**

 **I'm also convinced that the only possible way Sam managed to usurp Bucky to the front seat was by the universal laws of calling shotgun. HYDRA may have wiped all memories of his past life, friends, family etc but there's no way in hell they can scrub out the shotgun principle.**


	31. Act II Chapter VII

**CHAPTER VII**

Alvie got a message from Mouse. It arrived via one of the other Rats, who must have been tailing her, pulling her into a neglected doorway and ordering her to set a meeting place. She said the first place that came to mind and the Rat disappeared before she could ask her anything else, away into the shadows.

 _He knows. He knows I sold him out to the world, and now he hates me, and I've lost the one person in the world I know I love…_

 _Focus._ She dug her fingernails into the skin of her arm and focused on the pain. _I don't know anything yet. Just… just go see Mouse and find out why she wants to see you._

She didn't even remember when she had made the appointment, but thankfully Athena caught it - Alvie met Mouse in the coffee shop on the Saturday morning Alvie's friend Eva worked there, precautionary baseball bat hidden beneath her long camelhair coat. But when she arrived there was a different girl there instead, and since Mouse had not yet made an appearance Alvie called her friend.

"Eva? Where the hell are you?"

"London. I'm having a holiday," she explained, "well, kind of. My boyfriend went rogue with his buddy and abandoned me here to look after myself, but at least the weather's nice. Have you seen the news?"

"I'm living it," Alvie said, taking her drink and going to sit down in a corner. "Just… don't ask. When'll you be back?"

"End of the week," she said, "either that or when everything calms down. There's a no-fly zone over Europe at the moment, because of the UN attack."

As Eva talked, Mouse walked into the coffee shop and ordered a cup of tea, which she took and sat down opposite Alvie.

"I gotta go," said Alvie, "work stuff."

"Oh… okay. I didn't even know you had a job."

"I wish I didn't," Alvie muttered, and hung up. "What d'ya want to see me for?" she asked the pink-haired woman.

Mouse leant back in the overstuffed leather chair just as she had done back in her own abode, as though the entirety of New York City was in her possession – which, Alvie supposed, it sort of was. "I have a message for you, Miss Kennings," she said, "from one Mr Bucky Barnes." She smirked at Alvie's expression. "Came in on the low-lying frequencies between the New York radio stations. Analogue too, so it was so obsolete nobody was even bothering to monitor them. Except us. We tracked it back to a car in Berlin, which is where they were last known to be before they broke jail. Morse code, but beyond the name Alvie we couldn't figure out how it was encrypted beyond that." Mouse took a piece of paper from the inside pocket of her coat, unfolded it, and placed it on the table. "Be my guest. It's for you, after all."

 _Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit_

 _Calm down and take the damn paper she's offering._ Shaking, gnawed fingers took the paper, which was indeed covered in dots and dashes.

 ** _.- .-.. …- .. . -.-.-… - -.-….- -.- - - - - - -..- - - - - -.-..-.- -..-..- - -.- - - - - - -….-.- -..-.-.- -.- - - - - - -…- - - -.- -.- -.- -…- - - - -.- - - - - - -….- - - -..-.-.- -….-.-.- -….-….- - -_**

 ** _/_**

 ** _ALVIE_** ** _01010111001011110010000000110000001011010011011000100000001111010011010100100000001110000100100100111000001000000011110000110101001111010100111101111000_**

 ** _/_**

 ** _W/ 0-6 не ищи меня x_**

 _W/ is shorthand for with, and-_

 ** _0-6: US military ranking of "captain"_**

 _And I can read the Russian myself…_

 ** _WITH CAPTAIN DON'T LOOK FOR ME x_**

 _He… he put a kiss on the end of it._ Alvie could feel the corners of her eyes burning, and blinked furiously. _Don't you dare. Don't you dare start crying, Kennings._

"Not even I couldn't make sense of it," Mouse said, " _that_ was a blow to my ego."

"I could," Al replied on automatic, "thank you. And what do you mean, they broke jail?"

"There was… a kerfuffle, so I understand," Mouse said, running her thumb along her lower lip. "Rumors are that the Avengers are gearing up for a big showdown in Berlin. Tony Stark turned up in Queens half an hour ago and kidnapped their red-and-blue mascot."

Alvie stared at the paper. _'Don't look for me'. Bit late for that._

"You okay, lady?" Mouse asked, although it didn't much sound like she cared.

"Yeah." Al stood up, her voice trembling as much as the rest of her body. The room was swimming around her and the smell of java crawled up her nose and in her mouth, turning her tongue dry and sour.

"Well, it's payment on delivery, so…"

"Of course-" she sat back down to scramble through her bag, dropped a few hundred dollar bills on the table, and began to rise again –

A hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, locking her in place.

"One more thing, Miss Kennings," Mouse said calmly. Her hand was not tight on Alvie, but it didn't need to be. She was already frozen. "Barnes means that the Accords are personal now, so this is about to get very messy. All because you found a man in Romania when he didn't want to be found. Ross isn't very happy with you, y'know. And whatever troubles are coming your way, I'll bet they won't be half so bad as the ones awaiting your beloved Bucky Barnes."

Alvie flushed. "Let go a'me."

Mouse released her. "I warned you, Miss Kennings. _Don't fuck it up._ Did you listen?"

Alvie ran, all the way out of the shop and Mouse and her untouched cup of coffee. But the silver-tinted smile followed her out into the street, the dangerous grin of a nigh-omniscient woman. _What the hell does she know? Who the hell is she to say that?_

 _Who the hell is she to probably be right?_

But that wasn't important. He was alive. He was alive and free and he had found Rogers and –

 _And now half the Avengers are about to tear him apart. Because of me._

She pulled her scarf up over her head as a hood and stuck to the edges of the sidewalk, trying and failing to ignore the crowds. It was so loud, all of it, noisy and smelly and overly bright, unfamiliar and too intense, Athena catching every face and every registration plate, and even without the computer there was just too _much._ She missed her house, big and quiet; she missed small cities; she missed Bucky, who was warm and silent and a wall between her and a big, scary world.

She could still feel Mouse's hand on her wrist, like a burn.

 _I need quiet. Where am I?_

 ** _Harlem District. Route found._**

Arrows flashed on the path in front of Alvie, invisible to all but her. She stumbled after them down slightly quieter streets, swerving away and jumping into the road to avoid people, and tripped up the steps into a cool, quiet building, the clack of her heels echoing up towards the ceiling above her. Multicolored lights from the big stained glass window on the opposite wall danced around her feet. In the mess that was her brain, one word registered.

 _Church._

When was the last time she had been in one of these? It must have been when her grandmother was still alive, surely. The few times her parents had allowed her to stay in New Orleans Alvie had been taken every Sunday, regular, to sing songs she couldn't keep up with and listen to sermons she was too young to understand. But that had been home, for her, and even if they made no sense every word and note was as familiar to her as the back of her hand, and they had flowed over her like a silk blanket. She had been safe there, away from her mother and father and their coldness. Churches were good, and safe.

She remembered her grandmother, and the smell of okra, hand soap and furniture polish. That latter one was here too, rising up from the pews, and she concentrated on it and drowned out the outside as she walked down the central aisle, picking up one of those little kneeling cushion things –

 ** _Hassock (noun); a cushion for kneeling on while in church, at prayer_**

\- one of the hassocks and dropped it just before the main tableau, pulling her socks up over her knees before kneeling down and giving the big wooden cross a sceptical look as rolled the baseball bat up and down on her lap. It wasn't that she did or didn't believe in some kind of religion: it was just that she was too busy worrying about her present life to contemplate some kind of _after_ life.

But Delia Sedoux had believed, and not just in an omnipotent God-With-A-Capital-G. She had believed in _morality,_ in good and evil and right and wrong, in fate and destiny and saying grace and not blaspheming. And her granddaughter, knelt in the Harlem church, wished she could see the world in such a simple way.

It was like a joke. An inside joke that the rest of the world knew about, and assumed that she did too, and got angry when she didn't laugh at the punchline. How was she supposed to know what the right thing to do was?! It wasn't like there was a freaking _signpost!_

 _Uh,_ she thought, _I don't… I don't think I should be here. I've killed three people. Two of them were my parents. I fell in love with an assassin, and then I sent the hounds his way for something he might not have even done. I should probably have burst into fire as soon as I crossed the threshold._

 _So, like, if there is anyone listening, thanks for letting me in. That was pretty cool of you. And if you got any advice for a wayward soul such as myself, then…_

"Can I help you, ma'am?"

Alvie looked up; in front of her there was a late-middle-aged man in a wheelchair and a vicar's collar. "Oh," she said, scrambling to her feet, "sorry, I didn't mean to intrude…"

"You won't," said the priest, "y'know, that was a genuine offer of help." He held out his hand. "Father Wilson."

"Alvie Kennings," she said, shaking his hand. "I just. Um. I just wanted somewhere quiet to sit."

"Good place for it, here," Father Wilson nodded, "the pews are easier on your knees, though. Is that a yat accent?"

"Yes, sir," she said, falling back onto the seat. "Weak one, though."

He nodded. "My wife is from New Orleans. Nice place."

"Yessir."

"You look pretty tired, if you don't mind me saying, Miss Kennings. Everything okay?"

"Just Alvie. And I, um…" she rubbed her eyes, smudging her eyeshadow. "My life's kinda complicated right now, ya know? I mean, ya probably don't know, but – I think I messed up. But I had to mess up! I didn't have a choice. I done bad. But I didn't have no choice."

"Can you tell me what you did?" Father Wilson asked, and she laughed weakly. "Okay… then do you know what you can do to fix it?"

She chewed her bottom lip. "I dunno. I usually just… run away."

"And why don't you do that?"

"Because… because that would be _wrong!"_ she burst out, and her hands flew to her mouth. "Oh, _merdé_! It takes _this_ for me to figure out what's good and evil!"

"Alvie," the father said calmly. "Do you think that what you have done is bad? If you, as you say, truly didn't have a choice."

She shrugged.

"I don't. The Lord works in mysterious ways," Wilson said, and laughed at himself. "I have three children, Alvie. The older of my two sons is currently on the run with a known terrorist, and I doubt he imagined that would be happening this time last week."

Alvie put two and two together. "Your son's Sam Wilson?" she asked him. "The Avenger? I'm so sorry."

He chuckled. "That's not the usual response. But the point I'm trying to make, Alvie, is that he has never tried to fight the inevitable. The Accords may strike people as such a thing, but the rules of men are always flexible. But fate… that is where we become powerless."

"So you're saying I should just… roll with it?" Alvie asked him.

"No. Maybe. But I don't think you're a particularly bad person, Alvie. Just a little wayward, like you've fallen down a rabbit hole. But have faith. The winds will change, and you will –"

The doors of the church crashed open, a small figure silhouetted against the outdoor light. "You, Miss Kennings," Mouse roared, marching down the central aisle like a bride of hell, "are in deep, deep shit! Excuse me, father."

"I've heard worse," Wilson said.

"What kinda shit?" Alvie asked, jumping to her feet.

"Check the news. Ross' press conference. What did I say? What did I tell you?"

 ** _Accessing transcript:_**

 ** _"This breach of security is unforgivable. We have allowed Athena free reign up until this point, but releasing information with the deliberate intent of assisting with the escape of a terrorist has forced our hand. The UN is declaring Alvine Kennings, also known as Athena, as an enemy of the state. Any intelligence we have on her whereabouts is being released to the press as we speak. A significant reward will be given to anyone who can turn her in, dead or alive."_**

Alvie felt the world lurch; two pairs of arm grabbed her. "He can't do that!" she gasped. "We had a deal! He swore he wouldn't do that!"

 _He swore he wouldn't put your name on the Accords. He didn't say anything about_ this – _and if you bent the rules, that gave him the excuse to as well._

"What's happening?" she heard Wilson ask.

"Our little hacker here's had a price put on her head by the Secretary of State. That's it, Kennings. Deep breaths. Is there a back door in here, father?"

"Yes. Through the kitchen and to your left."

"Cheers. I'll send some people to protect your church."

"They wouldn't attack a holy place, ma'am."

"'They razed down the cities and plundered the sanctuaries'," Mouse said under her breath, staring up at the vaulted ceiling. "All due respect, father, but they would. Come _on,_ Alvie. I can't carry you."

Leaning on Mouse's shoulder as she gasped for air, the two of them staggered through the church and out into a dingey alleyway. "Right," Mouse said under her breath. "We need to get you back to the burrow, now. Oh, gods. Please don't start having a panic attack."

"It's all my fault!" Alvie gasped as she was hauled along, tears streaming down her face. "I don't wanna die! I DON'T WANNA DIE!"

"Stop screaming, will you?" Mouse snapped.

"THEY'RE GONNA KILL M-"

A small hand smacked her round the face, shocking her into silence.

"You're not going to die," Mouse told her, massaging her palm. "Not in my city, at least." Alvie watched, one hand on her smarting cheek, as Mouse pulled a gun out of the inside pocket of her coat. "We're gonna have to cut over this nice person's back garden. I'll give you a leg up."

They scrambled over the low brick wall and landed in a sparse patch of grass. Mouse went for the metal gate opposite them, topped with spikes so people couldn't get in. It also meant that they couldn't get out. "Shit!" Mouse hissed, and spun around. "Wait – gimme that baseball bat!" When Alvie didn't immediately respond, Mouse took it off of her and slammed it down onto the padlock, breaking it. She unwound the chain, which snaked down onto the floor, and dragged Alvie out onto the street beyond, pressing the bat back into her free hand. "And there's me wondering why you were carrying it around."

 _Bang! Bang!_

"Shit again!" Mouse grabbed Alvie's shirt and pulled her down. "I thought there were only mercs after you, but mercs round here know better than to shoot at me."

"HYDRA," Alvie panted, "they're HYDRA. They've been looking for me for years."

"Oh," said Mouse, " _good._ That's all I bloody well needed, was Nazi secret agents. What did you do to piss them off?"

"I'm a black-Latina woman with an IQ of 163," Alvie said, "pretty much just existing."

"Ha! Are they likely to be two blond men in black suits?" Mouse asked, scurrying behind a car for cover.

"Yeah," Alvie said, following her. "That's usually them."

"Point guns at you?"

"That, too."

Mouse pulled back the safety on her revolver, turned and fired four bullets. "Bullseye!" she hissed, running onwards. "White people shooting each other up in Harlem without a care for collateral damage – you can bet you won't see _this_ on the news. Unmarked van, your ten o'clock."

Athena scanned the registration as they cowered in an alley. "Stolen plates," she said.

"Mercs. There'll be half a dozen in there, but they're waiting until I leave." More gunshots. "Hans and Hansel brought friends, then. Bugger!"

"What now?"

"CIA!"

" _Miss Kennings!"_ someone roared over a loudspeaker. _"You are under arrest for crimes against the state! Come out with your hands up!"_

"Huh," said Mouse, "they really say that." She looked at Alvie, and stuck her gun back in her pocket. "Your call, Athena."

"Why're you helping me?"

"Not a dickie bird," Mouse said brusquely. "But you're useful to have on my side. Time to make a decision."

Alvie ran the situation through her mind. She could continue running with Mouse, and _maybe_ make it to a safehouse, but there would be no guarantee. Could she even trust the gangster? Somehow, she doubted it. She could try and make a go of it on her own – the idea was laughable. That left her with only one option.

"Run," she told Mouse, who nodded and disappeared in the blink of an eye. That was a woman who wasn't afflicted by a conscience, sure enough.

 _Forgive me, Bucky._ She stepped out onto the road, hands raised above her head, and dropped the baseball bat at her feet. "I surrender!" she yelled, as Athena calculated her chances of survival. They were not good. "Don't shoot me! Please, God, don't shoot me!"

Someone tackled her from behind and forced her onto the floor, ripping her dress and cutting her knees on the concrete. Heavy manacles snapped onto her wrists and the interface on her contact lenses died, as did the low whirring in her ears. _EMP,_ she thought, _killed my tech. Bastards._

Then somebody punched her, and everything went black.

 **A/N stuff that is both ridiculously fun and annoyingly difficult to write: fight scenes, code breaking, deductions and car chases. I wrote my first car chase the other day. It probably had an unnecessary amount of explosions, but hey, that's how I roll. Also - look at how long (by my standards) this chapter is! It's one of the few parts of my original draft of Act II that I could still use once I had actually seen Civil War. I was working off the assumption Steve died. There was** ** _so much angst_** **in that first draft, man.**

 **Also, a note about the code: there shouldn't actually be any spaces between the dashes, but if I try to upload without them then the formatting all goes to pot and it doesn't correspond to the binary beneath. So, if anyone was actually, like, proficient in code breaking/binary and doing it along with Alvie, sorry. It's the website's fault, not mine.**


	32. Act II Chapter VIII

**CHAPTER VIII**

"You're pacing," Bucky said calmly, steering the quinjet one-handed. He had been doing so for about twenty minutes now, his companion having relinquished control once they got into Russian airspace. Behind him, Steve's footsteps stopped.

"No, I'm not. How far away are we from Siberia?"

"Two hundred minutes, maybe. It's a ten-hour flight if we keep up at four hundred knots. You can't pace for all of it." With his free hand, Bucky started fiddling with the computer interface on the control panel, trying to get a news channel up. "Stark won't be far behind."

"The others won't betray us," Steve said firmly. Bucky wished he could be that trusting.

"Bet you twenty bucks?" he asked, and hissed in satisfaction as the screen flared up with an image of Ross standing at a plinth surrounded by microphones, a banner along the bottom of the screen declaring who he was. "Is that really what this guy looks like?"

"Yeah. What were you expecting?"

"Dunno," said Bucky, "someone taller, maybe."

"You really haven't seen him before?"

"He got office after I left Germany," he explained, "and there aren't many screens in Romania. TV stations that there are tend to stay away from western politics."

"Why?"

"There was this thing called the Cold War," Bucky said drily, "dunno if you heard about it. Hang on, I think I can get sound."

- _BzzT—_ "… with the deliberate intent of assisting with the escape of a terrorist has forced our hand," Ross was saying in a solemn voice. "The UN is declaring Alvine Kennings, also known as Athena, as an enemy of the state."

 _Fuck,_ Bucky thought as the screen cut away to a concerned reporter summarising the rest of the press conference _. Shit._

"Athena?" Steve asked, "she must have been the one who told the counter-terrorism task force where you were – them and the rest of the world, at least. We only found you because of that leaked information."

Bucky was half-listening to his friend, half to the reporter. "Footage shows Kennings being arrested in Harlem just a few hours ago, after having threatened CIA officers with a baseball bat. Reports also say that gunshots came from the woman's direction and hit two civilians, killing them both before paramedics arrived on the scene. It is unknown where she has been taken, but no doubt she will suffer the same fate as the other so-called "superheroes" who caused untold devastation when following the lead of Captain Rogers in trying to defend a known terrorist."

 _Bull. There's no way Alvie would shoot anyone now. Especially not civilians._ The press were building a story that painted her as a villain and, it seemed, truth was not a necessity for that story. _At least it's the CIA that found her and not HYDRA._

"We're dropping like flies," Steve murmured. "Just you and me left, now. With you –"

"'Til the end of the line," Bucky said wearily, "I know." _You just can't let me go, can you?_

He reached into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out the Prince tape. The case was cracked, but the cassette itself had survived with barely more than a scratch and all the glossy black tape itself coming unspooled. Pursing his lips, Bucky pulled out a knife and carefully started to wind it back in.

"Where the hell did you get that from?" Steve asked, appearing at his shoulder.

"Bucharest."

"You've had that since _Romania?!"_

"My lucky charm," Bucky replied absently. The knife slipped, and he swore under his breath.

"Didn't have you down as the type of guy to listen to Prince," Steve said.

"My girlfriend does," Bucky said, and Steve laughed.

"Whatever, man."

"I'm telling you," Bucky said calmly, finishing winding the tape back up and slotting it into its case, "you'll love her."

"This is about Sharon, isn't it? The one time someone's interested in me and not you, Barnes, and you gotta one-up me with your 'girlfriend'."

"Don't know what you're talking about," Bucky said, switching off the news report as it began to delve into Alvie's apparently very troubled past. _They're gonna have a field day with that._ "I've always been one hundred percent honest with you, Steve. I can't believe you don't trust me – finding out about Sharon from Wilson was bad enough, but this? This is going too far. Also, it's not the first time. Peggy Carter completely ignored me at that bar in London."

"They call them pubs over there."

"Actually, they're still called women."

"Glad to see HYDRA didn't wipe your sense of humor," Steve mumbled, and Bucky grinned.

Alvie would be fine. And if not, well, he would cross that bridge when he came to it. She had survived worse, after all – HYDRA, her parents, _him_. Bucky clenched his jaw as he remembered the bruises he had left on her neck that one time – but all it took was one time to be the _last_. If she hadn't said his name…. it didn't bear thinking about. He had almost killed her, and that hadn't even been the brainwashed Winter Soldier, that had been _him,_ waking up in a place he didn't recognize and lashing out at the person closest to him because, back then, he hadn't known that people could get close to you without wanting to hit you. Then, he had been able to wake up. What if someone used the trigger words when he was near her? He was lucky last time when the HYDRA agents turned up that the man in the suit obviously wasn't senior enough to know them. But if he had, then Alvie would have been dead, like so many others before her.

He couldn't live like that. Not with a detonation switch in his brain, and especially not now he had people – Steve, Alvie – that he really did not want to kill. However this ended in Siberia, he couldn't walk back into the civilian world again. He couldn't even fight. The easiest option would be to just put a bullet in his brain, but he couldn't do that, not to the people he… he loved. It would break them completely.

 _I'll figure something out._ He watched out of the window as gray stormclouds unrolled in front of them like a celestial sea. _I don't have another option._ They were going to the Winter Soldier holding facility, weren't they? There were still half a dozen or so of the bastards left, to his sketchy memory. Not all of them would survive –

 _Skin under his nails and blood in his mouth, a drunken soldier kissing him and the guards dragging him away from the bodies_

\- So he could use one of their holding facilities, maybe. Yeah, that could work. As long as none of them got damaged in the fight, they should still function fine. Then the only problem he'd have would be explaining to Steve and Al why he would be remaining frozen in Siberia for the rest of his life. Assuming the latter was out of prison by then. Assuming she had _survived_ being locked up. But what else could he do if not assume? What else could he do without the free will to act as he wished?

The triggers. It always came back to the words in his head. And he could not live with that.

"Buck."

"Hm?" he said, blinking. "What?"

"Are you okay? Y'looked… worried."

"Can't imagine why that would be," Bucky said, "you're pacing again."

 **A/N bit of cheeky banter with the super soldier lads**


	33. Act II Chapter IX

**CHAPTER IX**

Ross placed the paper with Bucky's encoded message on the table between them. "What is this, Miss Kennings?" he asked.

Alvie stared at nothing. She still had the manacles on, blood had run down her shins from the cuts on her legs, and one eye was swelling shut where she had been hit. "I had a house," she said dully. "It was a nice house. I was just finishing installing Ethernet. And I had a car. Karmann Ghia. It was red, and I'd fixed the engine so it went really fast. I _loved_ that car."

"The paper, Miss Kennings."

"I was fine," she continued, completely and deliberately ignoring him, "I was just minding my own business, with my house and my car and my status as an independent information broker that nobody wanted dead. And then _you_ came along, and thought you could control me. And here we both are. I've been arrested and taken to a prison in the middle of the Atlantic, and you're so stressed you haven't trimmed your moustache. I guess that big Avenger fight in Berlin didn't go so well for you." She lifted her chin to look at him, and spat. "Good."

Ross' face contorted in disgust as he wiped her spittle from his face with a silk handkerchief that he pulled, magician-like, from his sleeve. "If you will not comply," he said, "compromises will not be made. You will stay here, in a cell, for the rest of your life."

"Fine by me," Alvie retorted. If she was in here, people couldn't try to kill her. She would never see Bucky again, but she would have done the right thing, refusing to cooperate with this asshat. _The right thing._ When she thought about it, it was easy. The right thing to do was whatever would cause her the most pain.

"You'll never see your home again."

"I'll adapt."

Ross' fist clenched, and Alvie felt a small yet savage surge of satisfaction at the fact that she was pissing him off. "Miss Kennings, you will be held here at the Raft indefinitely, unless you choose to cooperate. Your properties and possessions will be seized by the government once you have been properly processed. Before that, however, you will be submitted to a complete psychiatric assessment in order to determine –"

"What? _No!_ You can't do that!" she yelled, standing up and slamming both fists on the table so he manacles clonked together. "I'm sane!"

"Your behavior suggests otherwise."

"I was provoked!"

"Miss Kennings, we are _all_ provoked! What we do _not_ all do is help with the escape of a serial killer and go rampaging through the streets of Harlem with a baseball bat! You expect me to believe those are the actions of a woman fully in control of her mental capacities? Lady, you are one wrong move away from being sectioned, and as Secretary of State I can do whatever the hell I want. And I want you labelled and catalogued with the rest of them, by whatever means possible. If I can't do it with the Accords, then I'll sure as hell do it with a psychiatrist."

 _I won't do it! He can't make me!_

 _Think, Kennings. Don't just panic,_ think!

"I want my phone call," she said, pushing the fear back down inside of her and hoping her voice wasn't trembling as much as her knees. "I get a phone call, right? I want my phone call."

"And who would you call, Miss Kennings? Who in the world do _you_ have to turn to?"

She glared at him. "Tony Stark," she said, "that's right. Him. _N_ _ow give me my god damn phone call."_

Ross frowned, then pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to her. She dialled Tony's number and waited, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet.

"I'm on my way!" came the irritable greeting. "Have patience, already –"

"Tony!" Alvie cut across him. "They arrested me!"

"Alvie? They… shit. I didn't think he would actually go through with that…"

"You didn't _think_? Why am I not surprised?" she said, and took a deep breath. "You got a lawyer I can borrow?"

"Not one that'll be able to get you out of that place, Al. Sorry."

"I don't want to get out," she said, "I want – Tony, they want to psychoanalyze me. I don't want them poking around in my only person allowed in there is me."

"You know, it can actually help –"

"Bull! They won't help me, they'll stick a label on me and I'll end up like my father!" _Ray Kennings – schizophrenic. On a rainbow of medication and taking none of it because how can you think straight on that many drugs? Treated like a madman instead of a human because of his condition, and getting so angry you take it out on your family._ "Please. Anything but that."

"But –"

"Tony, you _know_ me. I'm…" she took a deep breath and forced herself to say it. "I'm begging you."

There was a pause, filled only by the sounds of Tony breathing. He knew Alvie better than almost anyone, and he would have known what it took to get her to beg anyone, let alone _him._ "Fine," he said, "hand me over to Ross."

She passed the Secretary the phone. "Tony," Ross began, "you can't - ... I won't just - ... you expect me to - no, I understand that, but... she's - fine. That's your last favor. Don't be late." He hung up with a scowl, and turned his attention back to Alvie. "Count yourself lucky," he said, and looked at the guards. "We're not getting anything else out of her. Take the dumb bitch away."

%

They took her clothes, her beautiful clothes now covered in dirt and blood, and gave her godawful teal blue scrubs. They stripped her naked to do it and didn't let her dress herself, two female guards instead trying to get the shirt over her manacles. The act itself, ripping her last semblance of privacy from her, hurt about as much as her physical injuries.

"Get off a'me," Alvie said, as they tried to tie her hair away from her face. A handful of it was left in the guard's hand as she yanked her head away, and Alvie whimpered at the stinging in her scalp.

"Don't fight back," said the guard shortly.

" _Va chier_!"

The guard's face contorted and she punched Alvie, landing her fist right right in the center of her gut where it would wind but not visibly bruise. _Guess she knows French, then,_ Alvie thought as doubled over, experiencing true breathlessness for the first time since Bucky had choked her. It was like the punch had taken out her lungs, and now there was just oxygen rattling round the parts of her body that couldn't process it; Alvie struggled and gasped as her eyes started to cloud over. With a grunt, the guard picked her up and hauled her to her feet again, taking care not to be gentle.

She shuffled barefoot into the cell, which had both bars and six-inch thick glass, and as soon as they shut the door behind her she struggled out of the pants and rubber shoes. It didn't look like the shirt was going anywhere, though. She curled up on her pallet in a corner of the cell, her shoulder up against the glass, and let the tears fall.

A minute or two of sniffling later, and she flinched as there was a crackling of static. "Communal half hour," a voice said, and she heard a few sighs and murmurs.

"Still don't get the point of this," someone said. She recognized that voice…

"They're hoping we'll let something slip," another voice replied. "Wanda, you okay, sweetheart?"

"What do you think?" came the reply, laden with a European accent. _Wanda Maximoff!_

 _Does that mean… are the_ Avengers _in here? Why would they be in here?_

 _Because they refused to sign the Accords. And if they're here, that means that Bucky…_

"Hello?" she called out. "Who's out there?"

Nobody spoke for a moment. "Who was that?" the first speaker asked. Alvie finally placed the voice to a face – Scott Lang, the crook and engineer. There had been an interview with him on WHIH a while back, just before he was released from prison.

"Me," she said, standing up.

"Not helpful, lady." That was Sam Wilson. It was uncanny, how much he sounded like his father.

"Athena."

"The information broker?" questioned the voice that had called Wanda sweetheart, and if she pressed herself to the glass she could just about see Hawkeye in the cell next to Wilson's. " _You're_ Athena?"

"Wait," said Wilson, "aren't you Eva's friend? Allie?"

"Alvie," said Alvie, wiping her eyes.

Sam looked a little sympathetic now that he recognized her. "What did you do to piss off Ross, Alvie?"

"He wanted me to find Bucky Barnes for him," she explained, "and I did, but I didn't keep it a secret like he wanted. I passed it onto other agencies – one of which leaked it to Rogers. So he said I was a terrorist sympathiser and an enemy of the state."

"Join the club." A short-ish man with dark, messy hair – Lang – appeared in another cell. It appeared she was down a corridor from the rest, whose prisons seemed even more fortified than her own. She could see Wanda curled up on the floor, swaddled in a straitjacket, and shuddered. _That could've been me, if Ross had got his way with the shrinks._ "And for once I was actually doing the right thing. I think."

"You always think you're doing the right thing," Sam replied.

"Yeah, but this time other people agreed with me."

"Where're the others?" Alvie asked, splaying her fingers across the glass as much as her manacles would let her. The thick metal was digging into her wrists, now, tearing skin and drawing blood. "The captain and – and Bucky Barnes?"

"Can't tell you that," Barton said, "in case some naughty people might be eavesdropping. Didn't your mothers ever tell you that was wrong?" he yelled up at the microphone in his ceiling, and kicked the glass in frustration. Alvie remembered Athena finding out a while back that he had a family, a wife and three kids. But now, he was in a prison.

 _Ross, you bastard._

"Is Eva okay?" she asked Sam.

"I was about to ask you the same thing. Last time I saw her I left her in London."

"I called her yesterday," Alvie said, "she sounded like she was safe. It's not like Ross can go after her with the Accords, is it? She's just a gardener."

Sam nodded. "She'll stay in England," he said, "out of the way. She's smart enough to keep her distance for now. Alvie, listen to me. Don't freak out, alright? You're gonna be o –"

A metal door slammed down from the ceiling, separating Alvie's corridor from the room the others were in. "NO!" she screamed, launching herself at the glass. "You can't do that! _We were supposed to have half an hour!"_

"Calm down or we'll send someone into subdue you!" a harsh voice barked over the intercom, and Alvie fell to her knees in the center of her cell.

 _This has gotta be against the Geneva Conventions. Athena, pull me up a copy._

 _…_

 _Oh._ The silence of the computer made her feel more alone than the silence of the cell. Alvie bowed her head, letting her matted hair fall forward in curtains around her face. She needed a shower. Admittedly it probably wasn't top of her list of priorities right now, but –

"Hey, Kennings. Never thought I'd live to see the day you started praying."

Alvie looked up. Stark was stood in front of her cell, one side of his face heavily bruised and his arm in a sling. "I ain't praying," she said, "nobody would listen. It's pretty clear I'm already damned."

Stark shook his head and looked away. "You always were melodramatic," he said.

"Melodramatic? _Melodramatic?!_ I'm in a god damn cell, Tony! I'm a terrorist sympathiser! I'm an information broker with no bloody information!" She got to her feet and pressed her nose to the glass, getting as close to him as she could so he could see the rage in her eyes. "I am never gonna see daylight again because of you and your precious Accords."

"I just saved you from being put in a damn straitjacket!"

Alvie snorted. "Oh, and I guess that makes you a real saint, don't it?" she hissed, and Tony narrowed his eyes. "I bet you're so _proud_ of yourself while we're all stuck in here, the world's most intense naughty step. Good for you, Tony." She stepped back, clapping her hands with a sardonic grin. "You must be real proud."

"Stop it," Tony said. "You're not funny."

"I stopped finding anything funny when I got arrested!" she snarled. "So you tell me, Stark, what the _hell_ do you think you're –"

- _BzzT!—_

"That was the sound of your audio leaving this mortal coil," Tony said, "I already did it with Wilson, so I hope you realize how much of a risk this is. Alvie, I'm gonna help Steve and Barnes, so stop yelling. They've gone to Siberia."

 _What?_ "What? Why?"

"There's more than one Winter Soldier," Tony told her, "some Sokovian wants his own personal killing machine, thought turning the Avengers against each other would give him clear ground to find them. He's been playing us all along... Alvie, is there anything else about Barnes you can tell me?"

 _He swears more than you do, and doesn't notice when people switch languages around him. He purses his lips when he's thinking, clenches his fists when he sleeps, and he gets such awful nightmares, Tony. He wakes up screaming, or he wakes up crying. But why would you want to know that? What would you do if you found out that_ I _did?_ "He relies on his metal arm," she said, "his right side is weaker when he fights. Protect his right flank in close combat and he'll be invincible. He doesn't use his legs much, but there's no weakness in his defense there. He's fast, but the power's all in his upper body. He doesn't… he doesn't ask questions. He follows orders well."

"Thanks," said Tony, and turned away. "I'll see if I can get you dessert privileges."

"Wait!" Alvie yelled after him as he walked back down the corridor. "The Sokovian! Who is he?" _If I know his name then maybe, if I ever get Athena working again, I can help._

"Some nobody merc," Tony said without looking at her. "Colonel Helmut Zemo." Then the door dropped down like a coffin lid behind him, and he was gone.

 _Zemo._ Why did that name sound famili-

 _Oh, merdé._

It had been months ago. She got clients like that all the time, dozens of people trying to figure out what the hell HYDRA had been doing. He had told her not to remove the final layer of encryption, not to read the files. What was it Sam had said? _He wasn't the only Winter Soldier._ Zemo had used her to find others like Bucky, and she hadn't… she hadn't even thought to check who he was…

She wanted to scream, but the one rational part of her brain left made her press her hands over her mouth. _They don't know you heard that. You weren't supposed to hear that. Don't let on that you know. Whatever you do, don't let them realize that you're the one who helped Zemo find out about the other Winter Soldiers._

 _I'm gonna be sick._ "I'm gonna be sick!" she repeated out loud, and a door in the wall slid open to reveal a tiny metal toilet and sink. She lurched forward, grabbed the rim of the former and vomited up the scant amount of food she had eaten in the last twenty-four hours. When that ran out, her gag reflex began to burn with bile.

 _Great job with the inscrutability, Kennings,_ she thought as she hurled. _You had better sort yourself out soon, because you're not going anywhere._

 _I don't deserve to._

 _Exactly. Zemo is going to find the Winter Soldiers because of you. The government found Bucky because of you. "He's been playing us all along". Zemo's been behind this from the beginning. Who gave him the head-start?_

 _Me._

 _You._

 _Bucky's going to hate me._

 _If he survives long enough to find out, yes. But it's okay. Because stuck in this prison, you'll never even see him again._

She slumped forward against the toilet and sobbed, the aroma of sick burning her nostrils. A feeling of utter and complete wretchedness enveloped her, kissing the back of her neck like a lover and settling on her skin like a shroud. What had she done? Oh, hell, what had she done? The last time she had felt this bad was when…

 _A child's hands wield the wire-cutters clumsily, the handles so big that she has to take one in each hand. But her size allows her to wiggle easily beneath the glossy black body of the car, lets her reach the rubber flex lines connecting the wheels to the axis with ease. The car is new, but the brakes yield easily to the teeth of the cutters. It is much easier than the little girl expects, and she feels a surge of excitement. Soon her parents will return, covered in bandages but alive, truly alive, with an appreciation for life and their lonely daughter. All it takes is a little push. That's what the others say. One little push to make them realize how much they love you._

 _At two in the following morning, the girl is woken up and taken downstairs, where two police stand. One of them is large and has a face like a slab of stone, and averts his eyes from her. The other kneels down in front of her and explains, gently and hesitantly, that there has been an accident. There was a car. There was a road, cut into the cliff. There was a sharp turn, and a fall, and a fire. They must not have seen in the dark, said the police. They must not have slowed down for the bend._

 _The girl doesn't understand at first. And then she remembers the wire cutters, hidden beneath her bed. That is when she starts to cry._

The girl was a woman now, a woman collapsed in a high-security prison cell in the middle of the Atlantic. She had gone from being a simple murderer to an enemy of the state, a pawn in Zemo's plan to tear down the Avengers, a plan that involved the one person she loved more than anything else as collateral damage.

She was done. No more Athena, no more house and car and friends and lover. The rest of her life would be lived out in this cell, and that was all she deserved.

 _Oh, Bucky. I'm so sorry._

 **A/N aaand the penny drops.** **Also, to the guest reviewer who asked about LGBTQ characters - you are right in assuming that Eva is bi, and I've also written Alvie as pan. That being said I've been trying to find a good enough idea to write an LGBTQ relationship and have consistently been scrapping them because I didn't like them enough and, as a bi person myself, I especially didn't want to do shitty representation. However I now have one that I think works and you should probably keep an eye out for the next instalment of The Civilian Files, if ya know what I'm sayin)**


	34. Act II Chapter X

**CHAPTER X**

Bucky lay curled up on his side on the floor of T'Challa's quinjet, body forming a wall around the space where his arm used to be. Apart from the splitting headache from the artificial nerve endings that had been torn in his spine there was only ghost pain from the injury. it was still a weakness, though. A weakness he instinctively protected and hid, because if there was one thing he hated, it was to show frailty. If he had ripped that arc reactor from Stark's chest two minutes earlier, then this would not have happened. If he had done what Steve said and got out of the base, this would not have happened. Admittedly then Steve would probably be dead, but at least he…

No. There was no at least. Steve would have been dead, if he had left. Better to lose an arm than him. He couldn't deal with that on his conscience, not on top of everything else.

Above his head the other two men talked, clearly under the impression that he was unconscious. _Like a wife and mother over a hospital bed,_ Bucky thought dimly. Taking control like he wasn't even there, even though he was the _reason_ they had reached this point.

"What will you do now?" T'Challa asked. "The fallout will not settle soon. I will deliver Zemo to the UN for you. I think that would be safer; they will not try to arrest me."

"Thank you. I need to get my friends out of prison, too. They're in there because of me, it's not their fault."

"My warriors are at your command."

"Thanks, but just transport'll be fine. I'll go once Buck's safe in Wakanda."

"I can help," Bucky said, unable to keep schtum any longer. He got up, took two steps, and nearly fell over again as the quinjet, according to his senses at least, did a three-sixty. It didn't help that he went to grab the wall with a hand he no longer had. "Uh... shit."

"Here." Steve grabbed him and helped him into a seat, as every fiber of Bucky's being screamed at him to just _stop_ for a moment. "And you're not going to help anyone like that."

"I'm alright."

"Buck -"

"Fine. Your call, _captain_ ," said Bucky sourly, and T'Challa cast him a worried look. It was a remarkable U-turn on the seething hatred that Bucky was used to receiving from the man, but he would much rather that than pity. "But I've had worse."

"I know you have," Steve said in a sympathetic voice, and Bucky fumed silently. If they could stop treating him like a damn _victim_ for once since this whole thing had started, he would have been more grateful for it than if they had handed him the cure to brainwashing. He didn't want pity, or sympathy or whatever. He wanted to be treated like a person, instead of HYDRA's used and abused attack dog.

 _Not their fault,_ he reminded himself, and felt guilt, on top of everything else, for taking it out at Steve and the king when they had done so much for him. "Don't worry about me," he said weakly, "I'm okay. Worry about the Raft."

"How many do they have imprisoned there?" T'Challa asked.

"Four," the captain replied. "Sam, Wanda, Barton, Lang."

"Five."

"What?"

"Five," Bucky repeated, doubling over with a grimace as the burnt flesh on his side that had been hit by one of Stark's blasters throbbed. This headache was threatening to activate his gag reflex at any moment, and he did _not_ want to throw up in front of a king and warrior whose respect he had only just gained. "You forgot Athena."

That was the real reason Bucky wanted to help – right now nothing would be better than a metric fuckton of painkillers and the freedom to sleep for an eternity and a half, but he would be damned if he clocked off while Alvie was still in trouble. There was a Prince cassette in the pocket of his pants that was supposed to be for holding extra ammo, and now it was a matter of getting rid of the bloody thing more than anything. Giving up now was unthinkable, and he doubted he could Fed-Ex it to the Raft.

"She's in there 'cause of us," he continued, slurring his words. Hopefully he was talking English. The pain from the headache felt like it was oozing down into his spine, triggering every nerve ending it met along the way with all the thoroughness of vultures on an abandoned battlefield.

"You're right," Steve said, "I forgot about her. Five, then. I can handle getting five Enhanced out of prison. I managed five hundred of you back in the war."

"Really?" Bucky said through gritted teeth. "You never mentioned it." _Fuck, this hurts._

"Athena," T'Challa said slowly, "yes, I know of her. Alvie Kennings."

"We'll get her to wherever her home is," Steve said, "I'm sure she'll be able to look after herself."

Neither T'Challa nor Steve noticed Bucky's snort of laughter. If they did, they probably just wrote it off as a grunt of pain.

Now that he knew she was safe, Bucky let his mind move to the other imperative – what would happen to him now. Steve would want him to be free, the governments would want him to stand trial for crimes he admittedly did deserve to be tried for – but both would involve him being exposed, vulnerable to that string of words that could destroy everything. Even in Wakanda he could be reached, he could be dangerous. But if T'Challa had offered asylum, then Bucky could probably ask another favor of him, too. In the long run, it would probably be easier for everyone.

"This sanctuary," he said to the king, making an effort to keep his rasping voice level, "sounds pretty impressive."

"It is. The pinnacle of Wakanda's technology. We can fix you there, Sergeant Barnes. Make you whole again."

Bucky shook his head. "I wasn't thinking about that," he said, and the other two looked confused with a hint of concerned. "I don't need you to fix me."

"Then what were you thinking?" Steve asked him, and Bucky prepared himself to deal with the protests and arguments that were inevitably about to come his way.

"What d'you know about cryonics?" he asked, and before Steve could start yelling he passed out.

 **A/N I just pulled an all-nighter to watch the results of the Brexit referendum come in live because I am a Massive Political Nerd, and I'm tempted to go into cryostasis just so I can sleep for seventy years. Also, if any non-British person has a spare room going, please take me because my country is now going to hell in a handcart.**


	35. Act II Chapter XI

**CHAPTER XI**

Alone in her cell Alvie slept fitfully, twisting around on the shelf that was her bed until the blanket twisted itself into a rope that tied her legs together. For the fourth time since putting her head down, she woke up with a yelp and took a moment to remember where she was. Then the events of the past few days came rushing back to her like a tidal wave of garbage, and she untangled the blanket and used it to wipe her face clean of sweat and tears.

 _So this is hell,_ she thought, staring blankly at the metal ceiling. _Meals twice a day and my own guilty conscience for company. I just hope Bucky's alright._

A slat opened at the base of the door and a plastic tray slid in, holding something gray, unidentified and mulchy, a glass of milk, and a napkin. Alvie slid off of her bed and sniffed the goop suspiciously. It smelt, if anything, like carpets. She ignored it, gulped down the milk, and missed the smell of gumbo. _Should they decide to put me to a death sentence,_ she thought, _I'll get a last supper. Oh, lawd. Crawfish gumbo with bread to wipe the bowl clean, and pancakes covered in maple sauce for dessert. I wonder if they would let me have a bagel as well. And pizza. New York's awful, but they do damn good pizza._ There was a place in Brooklyn that had been around since Bucky's old lifetime, run by an insane Italian man who would throw knives around to entertain his customers. It had the best food she had ever tasted outside of her grandmother's New Orleans hotel.

 _Gawd, I'm hungry._ Her stomach growled in agreement, and before the mulch started to look appetising Alvie flushed it down the toilet. A few minutes later, a voice crackled over the intercom.

"Hunger strikes won't achieve anything, Miss Kennings."

"This ain't a hunger strike," Alvie replied, "this is called having good taste in food. Call again when you learn to cook."

Alvie played with the cup for a while, trying to keep it up in the air with her feet and knees and elbows. By the time the communal half-hour began, she had managed six seconds of the thing being airborne, and had gained two more bruises to add to the collection that had been lent to her by the CIA and Raft guards. They opened the door again so she could see her neighbors.

"I spy," said Scott, and the rest of them groaned, "with my little eye, something beginning with B."

"Bars," Barton guessed.

"No."

"Butts?"

"Unfortunately not."

"Bastion?"

"Nope."

"Well, I think that's everything," Sam said, "there's not that much to see."

"Birds!" Scott cried out, "birds! It was birds!"

There was a ringing silence. "Where… are the birds?" Wanda asked, speaking for the first time that day.

"Those two! Hawkeye and Falcon, geddit? It was a _joke,_ " Scott added, "you know what those are, right?"

Barton rolled over and slammed his fist on the glass of his cell. "Get me out of here!" he yelled, "I can't take it anymore!"

Communal half hour lasted ten minutes, and Alvie spent the afternoon trying to teach herself how to do a handstand. At what must have been evening they passed her another tray, this one now holding a single slice of ham between two paper-thin pieces of bread. Alvie scrutinised it for a while, but then hunger got the better of her and she wolfed it down. Her dessert privileges, which she assumed had been secured for her by Tony, manifested in the form of a small pot of cold custard and banana, neither of which lasted very long. In the evening they pumped in a song in order to relieve the monotony and stop them all from descending into cabin fever.

" _Bobbing along, bobbing along_

 _At the bottom of the beautiful briny sea…"_

It was almost as bad as playing I Spy with Scott Lang. Alvie wondered if they took requests.

The lights went off shortly after, and Alvie counted eight thousand white sheep before finally falling asleep. She dreamt that she was in Central Park with Eva, helping her sort out the rat infestation. One of them, a little white mouse with candyfloss pink fur, led her away from the park and down into a cellar where a faceless man called Zemo was building something, and needed her help. The construction behind him was already beginning to take the shape of a man, but there was a hole where its heart should be. Alvie turned and ran, but when she left the cellar she was not in Central Park at all, but Siberia, and she was cold and alone and she knew Bucky was round here somewhere, but she just couldn't find him –

She was awoken by the sound of a tray being slid into her room, containing a glass of milk and a pile of gray mulch. With her skin slicked with sweat, Alvie knelt down in front of it and, suppressing her gags, shovelled the goop into her mouth with her fingers, since there was no cutlery provided. God, she was hungry.

She won at I Spy. Her word was reflection; a dark-skinned woman with a bruised, thinning face staring back at her from the glass wall of her cell. Nobody had guessed it. In the afternoon, she managed to hold a handstand for a couple of seconds, and decided that tomorrow she would move onto a backwards roll.

Dinner was chicken soup and vanilla mousse, which came with a single metal spoon. She licked it clean between courses, so the flavors didn't cross-contaminate.

 _"Under the sea! (Under the sea!)_

 _Under the sea! (Under the sea!)_

 _Everything's better, down where it's wetter,_

 _Under the sea!"_

Six thousand and seventy-two sheep before she lost count. A small mercy: that night, she did not dream.

Wake up. Eat breakfast. Play with cup. Play I Spy; Sam dominates with a four-word conundrum of SBPC that he reveals, just before their communal time is ended, is "stupid bloody prison cell". Handstands and backward rolls. Boiled potatoes and a cookie. _"We all live in a yellow submarine."_ Two thousand, four hundred and eleven sheep. Sleep. Nightmare.

Wake. Eat. Stare at the wall. Listen to the others talk. Eat. _"Somewhere, beyond the sea, somewhere, waiting for me, my lover stands…"_ Losing count of the sheep. Sleep. Wake. Eat. Sleep. Dream…

Gunfire.


	36. Act II Chapter XII

**CHAPTER XII**

 _Gunfire?!_

Alvie jerked upright in bed. The cells were soundproof, supposedly, but the noise of the shots had permeated them. The door that separated her corridor from the others was open and in the dark, highlighted more than illuminated by eerie green backup lights, she could see figures moving.

 _This has got to be a dream,_ was her first thought, _so it's okay if I don't have pants on._ It appeared that the guards were firing, the tips of their machine guns flashes of firework light in the gloom.

 _Someone's brought the Fourth of July to the middle of the Atlantic,_ she thought, and smiled vaguely. _Ha ha._

One by one, the sounds of gunfire stopped as something, some nightmarish thing, moved through the night like a shark slicing through black water. Mere seconds after the last round of bullet echoed into silence, the lights in the residents' rooms of the Raft flickered on.

Captain America stood in the center of the room, knuckles bruised, not a weapon on him. Sam said something to him that Alvie, in her soundproof cell, could not hear. She could read his lips, though: "you're late."

"Better that than never." Steve reached down, pulled a device out of a prone guard's pocket, and pressed buttons experimentally. Lights turned on and off, a fire alarm sounded in the distance, and the sprinklers started to sprinkle. _Red button,_ Alvie thought, _come on, it's obvious. It's always the red button. When is it ever_ not _the red button?_

With the hiss of pistons firing and a flourish of smoke pouring out of the mechanisms, the bars of the cells receded into the walls, the glass then sliding away like a lifted veil. Smells that weren't her or food flooded into Alvie's nostrils – the smells of sweat and cordite, the scent of freedom. Part of her wanted to run, right there and then, but it drowned as it struggled against the tide of her inertia. She just sat there, unmoving, listening to the commotion beyond and not reacting in the slightest.

"What was it?" Sam asked, stepping out of his cell.

"Red button," Steve replied, jogging up to Wanda and undoing the straps of her straitjacket. "Come on, Wanda. Up you get, good girl. We'll get that collar off. It's going to be alright."

Wanda laughed weakly. "You're a liar," she said, clutching his arms in white-spider fingers as he lifted her up.

"That's four," Steve said as Lang and Barton joined them in the center of the room. "I need Athena, too. We can't leave her behind. She's just a civilian, she should never have got involved in this…" Steve spun on his heel, looking for the final prisoner. "Where is she? I'd have thought that she would've come running out as soon as the cells opened."

"Your eight o'clock," Sam replied, nodding down the corridor.

Steve found Alvie sat on the edge of her bed, thin blanket draped over her and bare toes curling against the freezing metal floor. "Oh," she said numbly as the soldier entered, "it's the Fourth of July. Are you here to rescue me?"

"I've come to take you home," said Steve, kneeling down in front of her with a somewhat patronizing expression of fatherly concern. "Is that okay?"

She shook her head. "Home wants to kill me," she said. "I can't go home."

"You can stand trial," Steve told her, "they'll be kinder to you. Ross'll take the price off your head."

Something unfamiliar bubbled up inside of her, and escaped her lips as a humourless laugh. "Doesn't matter," Alvie replied. "HYDRA know who I am. Everyone knows who I am. I won't last five minutes. I can't go home, sir. I'm sorry."

Sam came over. "You can go into hiding," he said, "Europe, Asia. South America."

"They'll find me. I can't protect myself anymore. I don't have anonymity as my shield." The words came out monotone, like a machine. It was like the EMP that had broken Athena had broken her emotions as well. She didn't feel anything as she tried to explain to them that, logistically, she was a lost cause. "You'd be better off landing a bullet in my head. Less hassle for everyone."

Stood silently behind his friend, Sam looked at her the same way Father Wilson had; like he wanted, genuinely and without ulterior motive, to help her. Not like his newcome companion, who had rage in the depths of his eyes. A rage that triggered, deep in the calcified depths of Alvie's soul, the faintest yellow flicker of fear.

"No," said Steve, "I'm not gonna do that, Alvine."

"Alvie," she and Sam both said at once.

"Alvie," Steve corrected himself, and extended a hand to take her shoulder in a comforting way – she flinched away from him, giving the hand a horrified look. Steve got the message, withdrawing quickly, then stood up to talk to Sam. "There's one place she'll be safe," he said. "You don't get much better asylum than the most reclusive country in the world. And if it'll work for Bucky, then –"

 _Bucky!_ That name worked like a bucket of boiling water over her head, and the yellow flicker of fear spread through her like plague rats in a sprawling city. _Bucky!_

Alvie leapt to her feet and ran past the two Avengers, out into the hallway that was being drenched with sprinkler water. Her foot slipped in a puddle and she fell onto her ass, scrambling back up again and bolting past the bemused faces of the others. If she ran far enough, then maybe –

A hand of iron grabbed her arm. "Alvie!" Steve said, "what is it?"

"Let go! Let go! It's all my fault!" she yelled. _Why isn't he killing me already? Look at the trouble I brought to the door of his friend, his Bucky,_ my _Bucky!_

"I ruined everything!" she shouted, struggling to get away from him. "It's my fault! It's not okay, it's all my fault!"

"We need to sedate her," Sam said, "we won't make it out of here alive with her screaming the place down."

"Just let me talk to her – Alvie, come on, you helped us by finding Bucky just as much as you helped Ross, it's not your fault at all –"

"NO!" she wailed, "you don't understand! _It was me who helped Zemo crack the Winter Soldier files!"_

The air, thick with steam and gunsmoke, became so solid it could have been cut with a butterknife. "Say that again," said Sam, as Steve's arms wrapped tighter around her waist.

Alvie shook her head and screamed, drumming her heels against the captain's legs and squeezing her eyes tight shut so that she didn't have to see Wilson looking at her like that anymore. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Let me go!" she shrieked. "Let me die! I deserve it! Leave me here to die, I don't deserve to be saved! Bucky might be dead because of me! _I am damned and dirty and you need to let me die!"_

"Right," said Steve, "sedate her. I'll get her onto a quinjet, can you –"

"Look after myself? Sure. I managed pretty well before you came along. Meet me and the others back here in ten – here, this was in the drawer. Labelled anaesthetic."

"NO!" Alvie screeched, clawing at Steve's arms. "DON'T! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

They grabbed her right wrist and pinned her down, sliding a needle into her skin. The last thing she heard was Steve Rogers swearing under his breath, before everything went black and she sunk into a blissful oblivion.

%

Alvie woke up on metal floor that vibrated slightly beneath her, with something heavy and warm covering her – she stretched out her fingers and felt thick, slightly coarse fabric beneath them. Somebody had retrieved her camelhair coat and draped it over her like a duvet. She had a headache. No, that didn't seem a strong enough expression… she _was_ a headache. Her entire being began and ended with this inescapable migraine.

Sitting up, she opened her eyes and saw that someone had folded her torn, bloody dress into a neat square and left it beside her, along with a bottle of water and two aspirins. Her baseball bat was nowhere to be seen. Her manacles were gone, too – she gave her fingers an experimental click, but apart from a brief flare there was nothing.

 _It'll start working again soon. The EMP will have had lasting effects, but Athena is self-maintaining. It will mend._

 _So now the important question – where the hell am I?_

She stood up, wobbling a little, and realized she was in the passenger part of a quinjet. The next thing she became aware of was Steve Rogers, sat in one of the passenger seats as the jet piloted itself.

"Morning," he said with a small smile, and Alvie flinched. Clearly, this was some kind of ruse to gain her trust before he killed her, making it all the more painful when he did. "Sorry about the anaesthetic, we had to get you out without a fuss. But don't worry, you're safe. I'm not gonna hurt you."

"But…" it was difficult to think with the traces of sedative still suffusing her mind. She pressed her palms into her eyes until lights popped across her vision, and struggled to get her words out. "But Zemo… I helped Zemo. And Ross. This is all my fault."

"You're not thinking straight." Steve stood up and guided her into a chair herself. "You've got cabin fever and you're out of the loop. I can imagine that would be unsettling for a lady named after the goddess of knowledge." He popped the aspirin out of the packet and dropped them into the palm of her hand. "Come on, Miss Kennings. You're okay."

 _Just like Bucky says. Said. Like he'll never ever say it to me again._ Alvie clenched her fist around the aspirin and squeezed until they cracked into a fine white powder, which sifted through her fingers and fell, like Siberian snow, to the floor. "No. No, I'm not. You should be tearing me limb from limb."

"There's already been quite enough of that," said Steve, "Alvie, please. Look at me." Reluctantly, she lifted her head, and fixed her gaze on his poster-boy blue eyes. "I swear on the life of Bucky Barnes that nobody's gonna hurt you anymore."

"Bucky?" Alvie whispered. "He's alive? I didn't kill him?"

"No, you did not. He's pretty indestructible, it seems."

Relief ran through her, a cool blue wave drowning out the yellow terror. _He's alive. I didn't kill him. Oh, thank God._ She started to cry, weeping into Steve's shoulder. "I never wanted to hurt anyone," she sobbed, "I just wanted to help, I just wanted to make things better. It never works. It never bloody works!"

"I know, sweetheart. I know."

Three hours later, when there were no tears left to shed, Athena started working again. Alvie was still sat in the passenger part of the shabby quinjet, keeping quiet and avoiding talking to her pilot. They were somewhere over the South Atlantic, about to breach the western coast of Africa, when an alert flashed up across her eyeballs.

 ** _Online. 463 unread messages._**

 _Yay. But first things first… find one of Mouse's dummy corporations and transfer $500,000 into it. I owe her for when she saved my life in Harlem._

 ** _Searching… transaction complete. Will be marked as anonymous._**

 _Doesn't matter. She'll know it was me. What else… text Eva:_

 ** _"_** _I have to go away. I don't think I'll be back for a while, but I'll call you when I can. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Athena. It wasn't that I didn't trust you, it's just… you were the one part of my life that was normal. Thank you for that. Steve Rogers is taking me somewhere safe, since I can't really go back to the US now. I'm transferring the deeds of my house to you – you don't have to move in if you don't want to, but it's so nobody else can take it. My car, too. I know you hate cars, but keep an eye on her for me. Thank you for putting up with me._ _ **"**_

 ** _Message sent._**

 ** _Deeds transferred. All possessions now legal property of Evaline Chloe Kresk._**

 ** _(1) New message from: Eva_**

 ** _1 question- is ur boyfriend bucky barnes? Bc he fits the bill u know_**

Alvie burst out laughing, a horrible nervous laughter that was so hysterical it was only a hair's breadth from crying.

"Everything okay back there?" Steve asked from the cockpit.

"Oh – um, yes. Sorry."

 _Liar. Of course it's not okay._

 _Everything that's happened is because I trusted a man called Zemo months ago, and didn't think to check who he was, or what it was he wanted me to uncover. Everything that's happened is because I let Ross get to me. This is all my fault. He only knows the half of it._

"Captain," she said quietly, "please… let me apologize. When Zemo asked me to crack those HYDRA files, I didn't think anything of it. I just trusted him. I didn't realize what it even was until Tony came to the Raft…"

"The Winter Soldier program?" Steve asked her. He switched on autopilot and came to sit opposite her. "You've never been in a war, have you, Alvie?"

"No, sir. Civilian to the bone, sir."

"Please don't call me sir."

"Whatever you say, ma'am."

Steve ignored the bad joke. "Nobody comes out of a war with clean hands," he explained, "I almost killed one of my friends to save another, and I didn't even realize until the last minute that that might be wrong. I had to walk away from all of it before I… anyway. You shouldn't blame yourself for all of this. There are far more guilty parties than you."

"Your friend," she said, unable to keep the tremble out of her voice. "Bucky. Bucky Barnes. You said he's alive. But is he… okay?"

Steve tilted his head as he thought. "He's been worse," he said with a wry little smile, and Alvie exhaled. "That's why you were so scared of me, right? You thought that I would hate you because of what's happened to Bucky?"

"Something like that," she said, and unfolded her legs to pick at one of the scabs on her knees. _So he's alright, and Rogers has forgiven me. But Bucky… I don't think I can ever expect the same from him. I was supposed to protect him, and instead I…_ she bit down on her knuckles to make her brain switch to focusing on the pain instead of doing something dangerous like carry on thinking. "Where are we going?" she asked, when she had regained control.

"A sanctuary in Wakanda. It's a safe place. The country's reclusive to say the least, and their king owes me."

"T'Challa? Yeah, I know him," she said, wiping her eyes. Steve gave her a confused look. "The country's massively advanced when it comes to technology. There was a conference, I was there, so were he and one of his sisters, she was cute… you probably don't wanna know the rest. But Wakanda… their tech doesn't even operate on a binary system. It's supposed to be impossible to hack from any computer outside the country."

"Supposedly?" Steve asked.

"I mean… it took me a while and I had to build a separate server to do it, but I had a look round their government records. Nothing particularly interesting."

"They have a national superhero," Steve said.

"That's not what I think's interesting. We have one too, don't we?"

"Not anymore."

 _Oh, yeah. And that's my fault, too._ Alvie looked down. "Thank you for this."

"You helped us out by making Bucky's location public instead of giving it to Ross," Steve said, "we owe you one. Actually, I was wondering why you did that. It's not like you had any reason to help us."

"Trust me, captain," she said, "ya wouldn't believe me if I told the truth. But what about you? What're _you_ gonna do now?"

Steve leant forward, his elbows on his knees. "Help my friends when they need me," he said, "and when they don't… I've forgotten how to be a civilian. It'd be nice to remember."

"It's nicer than this," Alvie mumbled, and Steve laughed. "When we get to Wakanda… I want to help. I wanna do something good for a change. I want to atone. D'you think – d'you think T'Challa'll let me? After everything I've done?"

Steve drummed his fingers on his knee. "You know," he said, "I think he'll have just the job for you."

 **A/N remember when this fic was predominantly humour? Ah, what fun times they were.**


	37. Act II Chapter XIII

**CHAPTER XIII**

 **(precursory A/N: the tape Bucky has been carrying around the whole time is of Prince's** ** _Do Me Baby,_** **and I'm not saying that if you start playing that song at a specific point during this chapter (you'll know when you get there) it will make it a hundred times better, but... it will. Anyway. Continue.)**

"A babysitter," Bucky said, "huh."

"No, Sergeant Barnes." T'Challa's face was placid despite the shortness of the man he was talking to. "Like you, Miss Kennings has sought asylum from Wakanda and, even if I did not know her personally, I would have trusted her to respect the immunity of this sanctuary. As it is, she is both one of the most excellent scientists of this age, particularly when it comes to biotechnology, and my friend. There is nobody better suited to your guardianship than her."

"I don't need a guardian," Bucky said flatly, and Steve grimaced.

"You need someone we can trust to keep an eye on your condition when you go under cryo," his friend said, "you need someone who can fix up your arm as best as we can get it. You need someone we can trust."

"Didn't she sell me out?" Bucky asked. He was enjoying this way too much, but no flicker of amusement made its way into his stony expression.

"And helped us find you, too."

"She decrypted the HYDRA files for Zemo."

"Without knowing what she was doing," Steve persisted, "Buck, c'mon. You know as well as I do that Alvie Kennings is our best option."

Bucky turned to stare moodily out of the window, marvelling at his stoic ability to hide his massive grin. "Fine. Just don't come crying to me when something goes wrong."

"I suspect that is the best we are going to get," T'Challa said solemnly. "I shall fetch her. It is only right that you meet." The king disappeared without a sound, not so much as the echo of a single footstep. Steve strolled over to Bucky, his face serious.

"I know you blame her," he said. "Don't. She hates herself more than you do."

 _You have no idea._ "I doubt that," he said out loud, still glaring at the rainforest outside. "We can't trust her."

"If T'Challa does, then we do. And _you_ were the one who reminded me to break her out of the Raft."

"That was before I knew you were adopting her," Bucky said.

"Don't exaggerate. Buck. Just give her a chance, okay? I can't stay here, it's too dangerous for us to be near each other, they'll figure out. But she's a civilian, and she wants to make some good after… after everything. One chance, that's all I'm asking. You don't even have to like her, just cut her enough slack to help you."

"The news said she was crazy."

"She's harmless. I couldn't imagine her killing anyone."

 _And I don't have to,_ Bucky thought, _I've already seen her do it._

At that moment the doors opened and T'Challa walked in, shadowed by a woman in a bloody dress and bruises all up one side of her face. God. Had she always been that beautiful? There was something about the lines of her form, an infinite flow and grace to the way she walked and stood, even now with her posture making it clear she wanted to shrink like Lang until she was invisible. Big yellow-brown eyes met his, the eyes of a doe in a bear trap, impossibly epicurean eyes that drank him in even as they flickered in fear of what he would do to her.

"Bucky Barnes," said T'Challa, "Alvie Kennings."

Neither of them said anything. Alvie stood and trembled, Bucky remained statuesque. Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky saw Steve's eyebrows lower in concern, and T'Challa's posture shift in case he had to intervene, to drag a raging Winter Soldier away from the woman.

"I can tidy that up," she said at last, nodding at the wires dangling from his left shoulder. Bucky nodded, and glanced at Steve.

"We'll give you both a minute," said the captain, who could read his best friend's face like the dark-haired Maximoff girl could read minds. Or at least, he _thought_ he could. The two men left the room, shutting the door behind them, and as soon as they were alone Alvie's soliloquy began.

"I'm so sorry," she said, "oh, Bucky, I had no idea what was going to happen to you. It's all my fault, it was me who told Ross where you were and it was me who helped Zemo and I didn't even think that maybe he would be dangerous. I ruined your life, I almost got you and the others killed because I was so stupid. God, you must hate me. I don't deserve your forgiveness. I'll fix your arm and keep you safe but I'll understand if you just, just _kill_ me here and now because I screwed over _everything_ and you have every right to just, just –"

Still with a straight face, Bucky reached into his pocket and threw something at Alvie. She caught it in her fingertips on reflex, shocked into silence by the unexpected action, and turned it over, the cracked plastic of the case fracturing her shady reflection in two. Then her eyes, still glistening, flicked up to meet his own.

Bucky grinned.

Slowly, tentatively, like the first thaw of spring, a smile crept over Alvie's face. Her eyes glazed over for a minute and the intercom speakers in the room began to play the languid, ridiculously 1970s song.

He met her in the middle, one arm more than enough to take her entire waist. The bruises on her face were turning green like saplings, her tear-filled eyes shone dark and gold like sap, and she was the most perfect thing that the Winter Soldier had ever seen.

 _"Here we are, in this big old empty room,_

 _Staring each other down…"_

She started to sway, still smiling, making him move with her. They danced; the kind of dancing with an ulterior motive to it. Her lips were so close he could feel her breath on his own…

 _Out in the hallway, T'Challa's eyebrows lowered as he heard the music coming from behind the door. "Is that… Prince?" he asked slowly._

 _Suddenly, everything clicked into place for Steve._ No way, _he thought,_ surely, there's no god damn way he...

 _He turned, looked through the window of the door, saw what was happening beyond it and immediately averted his gaze again, a blush creeping across his face as T'Challa echoed his movements and made a small, somewhat embarassed "oh" of comprehension as he saw what the two runaways were doing in his lab. "They..._ oh."

 _Steve shook his head. "Son of a bitch," he said under his breath, and laughed._

 **A/N every so often there comes a chapter that's just genuine, flat-out, satisfying** ** _fun_** **to write. This was one of those chapters. It ties up so many loose ends, it's HAPPY, and for someone who doesn't laugh at their own stuff a lot, imagining the first couple seconds of** ** _Do Me Baby_** **breaking out at full volume in a Wakandan scientific facility is** ** _hilarious_** **to me.**


	38. Act II Chapter XIV

**CHAPTER XIV**

"Anaesthetic was an option, ya know," Alvie told Bucky as she set down the circular saw and picked up a file. "I can't imagine this being much fun to watch."

"No," said Bucky, watching as she filed away the ragged edges of the metal that the saw had left. "It's fine. I'm used to being awake."

"This does feel like déjà vu," Alvie nodded, now picking up her blowtorch and pulling her goggles down over her face. She had intended to salvage all she could of the arm, but that was pretty much just the shoulder. A small part of her mourned for the loss of such technology. "Seems like forever ago you were sulking in my apartment."

"I don't sulk."

"Sure ya don't." The alloy of his arm melted together, the plates grafting to form a single, neat surface. "So Tony… Tony found out about his parents, then."

"Yeah."

 _Who should I empathize with – the killer or the child? In my case I'm both._ "He'll get over it," Alvie said, and Bucky raised an eyebrow at her. "Okay, maybe not _completely._ But I'm sure he'll eventually stop wanting to blast your face off."

"I don't care about Stark."

"Sure ya do," Alvie said, "you might not like him much, but he's one of your victims, right? Indirectly. And I know you care about those. I've seen you wake up from nightmares." She put down the blowtorch and rubbed her eyes, pushing the goggles back from her face. "Right… I think I'm done closing it up – it just needs to cool. Lucky I was here to fix it, right? So what now? Do we leave Wakanda, or stay here and wait for Steve to give us the all-clear so you can go home?"

Bucky frowned. "Al," he said, "I'm not… you know what's happening, right?"

She stared at him. "T'Challa said he needed a scientist as your guardian," she replied, "what else would I be here for, if not to stitch up your arm? Bucky? What am I missing? What haven't I been told?"

Something akin to guilt was settling into Bucky's normally inscrutable expression. "Al," he said, "I'm not leaving Wakanda anytime soon."

"What does T'Challa want you to do?"

"Nothing." He looked away, as though he couldn't bring himself to meet her eyes, and that was what really began to scare her. "I'm going back under ice."

Alvie dropped the tool. Alvie felt herself begin to cry. Alvie ran.

%

"Alvie –"

"Go away!"

It was half an hour later, half an hour after she had run out of the lab without looking back, and she was curled up on the floor of the rooms T'Challa had given her to live in, pressed up in the corner where the wall met the floor-to-ceiling windows. The glass, six inches thick and completely bullet resistant, had misted up on the outside with jungle rain, and was skin-stickingly cold on Alvie's shoulder.

Bucky stopped two feet away from her, back leaning against the glass too. "Al," he said softly, "I'm a nuke. There's these – these trigger words HYDRA put in my head." When Alvie, for once, didn't reply, he continued talking. "I hear 'em and I'm not… there's no Bucky left anymore. Until someone can get those words out of my head, I can't act like it's okay."

"You're forcing yourself to go through that again because of the risk that someone might try to use you? You're dangerous, sure, but we can stop that from happening!"

"I'm not dangerous, Al. I'm genocide waiting to happen. It's not a risk, it's a god damn inevitability."

"But –"

"And you're never leaving me," he said bitterly, "right? So you'll be first in the line of fire. You, then Steve, then whoever else they want me to kill."

She looked up at him. "You tried to kill me before, remember? It didn't work."

"Al, don't you get it? There won't be any of Bucky left to listen to you! Bucky loves you, the Winter Soldier doesn't give a damn! The nightmares – they aren't just the things I've done anymore, they're that I could do. I've seen myself killing Steve, and you, and fuck knows how many other good people so many times that it feels more real than when I'm awake. I _can't_ let that happen!"

Alvie stared. She had seen him angry before, of course, but this wasn't just anger. This was rage and desperation and terror, all rolled up into one. "I didn't think," she began, and fell back into silence. He was scared and guilty, and the first thing she had done upon finding out about what he was going to do was to run away. That was wrong of her. She should have understood how fear and guilt can motivate someone.

"So which one of you's choosing to go back under, then?" she asked.

"Both. Neither. Whatever it is that I am now."

Alvie reached up and took his hand. "Whoever," she said, "not whatever. Are you sure?"

Bucky sat down so she wasn't straining to be in contact with him, crossing his legs and leaning his temple against the glass as he stared out at the infinite rainforest beyond. "Yeah," he said. "Sorry."

"Then I'll still stay. I doubt you'll be any less talkative," Alvie said, and he half-smiled. As he did she noticed, in one small, detached corner of her brain, how he was sat – not like usual, with his limbs untangled and stretched, ready to run or fight, but curled up, vulnerable, just so as to be closer to her. "There's no need to apologize, _cherié._ I get it. I really do. _I_ should be the one saying sorry. I overreacted."

"You always overreact," Bucky reminded her. "It's your MO."

"Thanks, babe," Alvie mumbled. "It's just…" she squeezed his hand as tightly as her brittle fingers would let her. "I just found you again, only to lose you. It's –" she stopped herself from whining that it wasn't fair, lest she regress to a spoiled brat completely and start stamping her foot. "It's not particularly fun."

"As soon as they find a way to make those trigger words mean nothing, I'll be back," he said. "And wake me up if you need me."

"I always need you," Alvie confessed. "But I'll try to be objective."

He took the back of her neck in his hand, his fingers weaving through her hair, and kissed her. In the years he had been gone he seemed to have learnt softness, and it was a surprisingly gentle kiss. "I trust your judgement," he murmured.

"What - really?"

"God, no."

Alvie laughed with a sniff, and wiped her eyes before the tears fell out of them. "Can we not just have one week?" she asked, shifting closer so that she was practically in his lap, "one week where everything's normal, and there's no – no HYDRA, or buzzwords, or superhero wars or whatever? Is that really too much to ask for?"

"Probably," Bucky said, and kissed her again, this time on her knee, right atop the graze, leaning back a little in order to do so. She had missed him so much, and just when she had got him back he was disappearing again. But at least… at least now, he was close, and should she need him all she had to do was defrost. At least now, it was what he wanted. It was odd, how they had ended up here – two people from completely different worlds, now in neither but a third place, so beautiful it could easily be mistaken for paradise.

"D'you believe in fate?" Alvie asked him.

"No. Never seen it."

She laughed. "Fair enough."

"But –" his hand moved to the side of her face, his thumb tracing the edges of the bruises. "I never knew why I lived," he said. "I was of no good to the world, and Steve was better off without me. I had no family left, it wasn't my world anymore… but then I met you. All those years and impossible things, and I ended up meeting you, like it was always part of the plan. Like _you_ were always the plan."

Alvie smiled. "That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"Yeah, well. You weren't worth it," he said, and she punched him. "Neither was any of this."

"I guess," she said, "if you hadn't run, then you'd be in a psych facility instead of a Wakandan fridge. That's what Tony wanted, ya know that? Even after finding out about his parents, he still woulda done it by the book. Once he'd calmed down a bit."

"You think?" he asked in a sceptical tone.

"I know him. And I know how guilt drives people, too. With Tony, it's personal – he's not like you and Rogers, he was never a soldier. He signed the Accords outta personal guilt, he lost it at you with personal hatred and vengeance, but he's got blood on his hands just like you do, Bucky, he _gets_ it. And he _would_ help. He wants to save the world one small person at a time, rather than going to war for a principle like Ste– like other people might do."

Bucky gave her a funny look. "Did you love him?" he asked.

"No. He was too much like me. Except I don't really wanna save the world."

"Figured that," said Bucky. "Not that any of that matters. Stark's not here. It's just you, me, Captain America and the king of Wakanda."

"Pretty sure I've had that fantasy," Alvie grinned, and Bucky rolled his eyes.

 **A/N I got a lot of reviews on the last chapter asking whether or not it was the last one. As this chapter shows it isn't, but I'll re-establish that I've still got a** ** _lot_** **more I can milk out of this fic, and when it eventually does end, I will make that absolutely clear. So yeah, you're not getting rid of me that easily.**


	39. Act II Chapter XV

**CHAPTER XV**

"So," said Steve, as he struggled with the coffee machine, "Alvie Kennings, huh?"

Bucky responded with a raised eyebrow and silence. In the next room he could hear about half a dozen people talking over each other in French, a more common language here than English, as Alvie organized the scientists that the Wakandan king had appointed to be under her command. The hacker had a complete lack of authority, but it was clear that her sheer, unbridled, crazy-scientist-level genius had commanded the respect of the best and brightest of the University of Wakanda's sciences department. The only problem was a slight language barrier, but Alvie was learning Wakandan as quickly as they were French and English.

"Not that I've got a problem with her," Steve continued, trying and failing to reattach the water canister to the machine, "she's just… not what I expected."

Bucky continued to say nothing.

"She's sweet, though. How long have you known her?" Steve asked, and swore under his breath as he spilt water everywhere. "Kresk makes it look so damn easy," the captain mumbled to himself.

Bucky gave in with watching his friend struggle and, quite literally single-handedly, reassembled the coffee machine and smacked the button so that black water began to dribble out. "Couple years," he said.

"Come on, Buck. You gotta give me _something,_ " Steve insisted, tearing a sugar packet apart with his teeth. "I didn't go rogue just for you to not tell me about your girlfriend."

"Didn't ask you to look for me," Bucky replied, "and I did tell you stuff about her. You just didn't believe me."

"So you've got three kids waiting for you in Moscow?"

"Ha ha," said Bucky drily, and Steve grinned. "Don't push it, Rogers. I could still beat your ass one-handed."

At that point, Alvie stuck her head through the door. " _Cherié_ ," she said, "how tall are you?"

"Five eleven."

Alvie's face lit up. "You're _tiny!_ " she declared, and disappeared again. Bucky glared at Steve, daring him to comment. Before his friend could open his mouth, however, Alvie appeared again, popping up between them and taking Bucky's shoulders in her hands. She stepped back, arms still held out so she had his approximate width, went "hmm", and then ran back off into the lab.

Steve blinked – the whole interruption had taken place over about seven seconds, and people tended to struggle to keep up with Alvie. "Is she always like that?" he asked, and Bucky nodded. "Wow."

"Yep." Bucky patted his friend on the shoulder, and wandered into the lab. "Didn't you have my measurements already?" he asked Alvie, who was checking a clipboard one of her assistants was showing her.

"I wanted to make sure," she replied. "We calculated everything for a guy with two arms, see? I kinda forgot about _that._ " She jabbed a finger in the direction of the armless void at Bucky's side. "Now we know you're not gonna list to the left a bit when you go in, which, although funny, would bugger your spine right up. You'd come out a hunchback. Not that I wouldn't still love you, obviously. I'm not _only_ into you for your body."

"Had me fooled," Bucky replied as Steve walked in behind him. In the center of the lab was a man-sized chamber linked up to a computer and various screens that were waiting to hold his vital signs. It reminded him of HYDRA and made his skin crawl a little, but when compared to the alternative it swiftly began to resemble a five-star resort. "Will I age?"

"We don't think so. We estimated that any aging you've shown since the forties is the amount that occurred during the times you were on a mission, so while you're on the rocks you should be completely, ha, frozen in time. Hello, Mr Rogers. You've got coffee on your shirt."

"The machine fought back," Steve replied with a small smile. Bucky had expected the same reaction to Alvie that Steve had had to his girlfriends back before the war – that was, a blushing, bumbling mess – but the serum had clearly given him some confidence. Too much, perhaps. But Alvie barely gave the blond a second glance. "It's nearly done?"

Alvie nodded, her bangs fluttering in front of her eyes. She was wearing her hair loose, using it to hide the bruises on her face. "They already had the tech, we've just been adapting it for this specific specimen."

"Specimen?" Bucky asked in mock affront. She winked at him.

"It's made of glass for visibility, but it's gonna frost over completely. Still, it's the thought that counts, right? I debated putting speakers in there, too, but they would have been too much of a bother to maintain."

"I'm gonna be unconscious, Al."

"Yeah, but it's still nice to have stuff on in the background, ain't it?" she said defensively, folding her arms. Someone had given her a labcoat, which she was wearing over the undershirt she had stolen from his combat gear, and red silk shorts. Where she had managed to obtain _those_ , and the round smoked glasses that were pushed up into her hair, in a scientific sanctuary in the middle of nowhere, Bucky had no idea. "Like, white noise. Stop looking at me like that. It's not stupid!"

"Never said it was," Bucky said smoothly.

"Oh… shut up. And you'll have to wear scrubs, by the way. Jeans aren't hygienic and they'll go all funny when the ice gets in them. Mr Rogers, are you going to stay in Wakanda?"

Steve took a moment to notice the sudden and unforeseen change in conversation. "Hm? Oh, no. Splitting up is safer, and I'm sure you'll be fine without me. I'm not needed here, am I?"

"No," said Alvie, with such firm frankness that Bucky had to hide a grin at Steve's surprised expression. "Sorry, was that rude? It wasn't meant to be."

"It's fine," said Steve. "I'll send a postcard."

Alvie exchanged a glance with Bucky. "Your friend thinks he's funny," she said, then added to Steve, "that _was_ meant to be rude."

There was a half-second of silence, and then Steve and Bucky both cracked up. Relief flooded Alvie's face and Bucky realized that, in her own strange little way, she had been trying to win the approval of his friend who she would have heard so much about. It occurred to him that he too had been paranoid about the two of them hating each other, since they were the only two people in the world he was certain he loved, but now some kind of wall had fallen between them.

"Malara explained the brain trigger thing to me," Alvie said once they had stopped snickering, "she's the one who's gonna look for a cure. Has she told you how your head works?" Bucky shook his head no. "Well, the chair HYDRA used wiped all your declarative memory while keeping your procedural stuff, which meant you could remember _how_ knowledge, like how to walk and talk and stuff, but not _what_ knowledge, like your name. That's why you can understand different languages, but you can't actually tell what the language _is –_ the Winter Soldier can learn things easy, but not the circumstances in which he – you- learnt them. You were the perfect soldier _._ They could wipe you over and over again in a way similar to HM's anterograde amnesia because the procedural memories are kept in a completely different part of the brain, right? Back in the cerebellum. But the declarative memories are all in the, uh… Malara, what's it called?"

"Medial temporal lobe!" a scientist called over.

"Medial temporal lobe, yeah. But that begs the question, where do the trigger words go? They survived the mindwipes, so they're not where we would assume our memories of specific words would go. Which means that they must have some kind of subconscious trigger in the cerebellum, which HYDRA put there by just constant repetition and, I dunno, some reaction conditioning. Which makes our, or rather Malara's life difficult, because now we have to figure out how to burn out the trigger word neurons while not touching the rest of it, or you'll be eating through a straw and talking like a baby 'til the end of time or whatever else it takes to kill ya."

"Great," said Bucky, "is that it?"

"I mean, it's also entirely possible that you could lose all hand-eye coordination," Alvie continued, scratching the back of her neck. "Which would suck, obviously. And wouldn't at all be funny. Anyway, my point is that this'll take a while. You won't be home in time for Christmas."

Bucky could see how upset she was by that; much more so than he felt. But of course, he wouldn't even notice the time passing. She would. Steve would. And while Steve could undoubtedly cope, Alvie was a hell of a lot more emotional about stuff like that.

"But it's still possible?" Steve said, and Bucky gave silent thanks for his optimism.

"Oh, yeah. We've got more files from the Pavlov Institute than a psychology student the night before their final and Malara's, like, super-clever." And just like that, Alvie was cheerful again. "Look at her! Brains _and_ beauty. Honestly, Buck, if she weren't straight and you didn't exist..."

Bucky grinned. "Eyes straight, Kennings."

"Yes, sarge. Now get outta my lab and take your poster boy with you."

 **A/N I think Seb Stan's only, like, 5'10, but I gave Bucky an extra half inch. And I say** ** _only..._** **I guess that's a little above average height, but I myself am quite tall and am used to all the guys I know also being an average of 6'2, so in my mind that's kinda short, and I thought Alvie (who herself is a little below average) thinking he was tiny was funny, so I left it in. Anyway. This has been Talking About Heights with Siriuslocked.**


	40. Act II Chapter XVI

**CHAPTER XVI**

It was quite possibly the oddest combination of diners there had ever been. T'Challa's bodyguards stood outside the door, and Alvie tried to avoid Bucky's eye at the table, lest she start giggling. Tomorrow he went under the ice, so tonight was special.

"Ogogoro," T'Challa said, pouring a clear liquid into glasses. "also known as madman in a bottle. Hundreds die from poorly brewed ogog every year. To perfect it is an art."

"Can't be that bad," Alvie said breezily, as Steve took one of the glasses and handed it to her. She took a mouthful of the gin, gagged, and slammed her fist on her chest.

 _Come on, Kennings. You can do this._

 _This is what death tastes like!_

She threw her head back and, with great difficulty, swallowed the drink. "Merdé!" she gasped, eyes watering. "That's... that's smooth!"

Bucky downed half his glass without batting an eyelid. "Stop showing off," Steve told him.

Bucky shrugged unevenly. "You get used to choking down some nasty stuff," he said, and glanced at the king. "No offense."

"None taken, my friend."

"Friend? Weren't you trying to claw my eyes out a week ago?" Bucky asked.

"Ah... yes. Well, I had hoped all was forgiven."

Bucky smirked, but said nothing. Underneath the table, Alvie kicked him.

"Should you even be drinking?" she asked him. "What with all the nerve damage and the fact you're getting deep-chilled tomorrow and all that."

"You're my doctor," he said, "you tell me."

She considered the situation for a moment. "You've survived worse," she said with a shrug, "go nuts."

Wakandan food was traditionally eaten with the fingers, and was heavy with flavor. Even Alvie, who usually ate like a bird when it wasn't her cooking, practically licked her plate clean. Between them, Bucky and Steve ate enough between them to feed the nation of Wakanda for a lifetime. An hour later the table was clear and and Alvie, her brain fuzzy with tiredness and alcohol, had switched off Athena and was letting her head drop onto Bucky's right shoulder, his overlong hair tickling her forehead. He had finished the bottle and still, annoyingly, seemed to be completely clear-headed. Damn the bastard and his accelerated metabolism.

"I kid you not," Steve was laughing, extending a hand in the direction of T'Challa, "three of 'em! Completely naked, like they were swimming in Prospect Park during July and not Slovakia slap bang in the middle of a war. Obviously, we couldn't leave the poor girls there, so we gave up our coats and took 'em back to base. What was it Phillips said?"

"'Do whatever you want in the field, just don't bring her home to meet the parents', I think," Bucky recalled with a smirk, "only time I ever saw Carter yell at him."

"What happened to the girls?" Alvie asked. "Spare me the details."

"Stark took care of them," said Steve, "he was in the area. Beyond that, we didn't ask. Then there was the time with the -"

"Russian housekeeper?" Bucky asked. "Sure you wanna tell that one?"

"Uh... actually, it's probably better if I -"

"Oh, no," T'Challa cut in, "please, do not stop on our account."

"Come on, Steve. I know you remember. There was a HYDRA base in Poland, this big-ass mansion with basements that went on for miles. That's how it starts."

Steve was turning bright red. "It was empty," he said, "at least we thought it was empty, so we only sent a two-man mission to see what we could find, me and Buck. Except -"

"It wasn't empty," Bucky said with a wicked grin. "We walk in with full fatigues, and there's a woman there. Just one, but probably enough of her for four."

"So I was thinking," Steve continued, "how are we gonna get out of this? She's an unarmed civilian, but she's got big enough arms that she could probably knock Dum-Dum Dugan out. And then Bucky Barnes steps forward and says, in the worst French accent I have ever heard or will ever hear -"

"Bodyguards," Bucky said, "I told her we were bodyguards, sent by Schmitt from the front to make sure nobody tried to attack her. And that we were to do whatever she told us. She liked that."

"I wish you hadn't said that," Steve lamented, face in his hands.

"So we're stuck with this Goliath of a woman, but there's no way we can get to the cellar without her noticing and raising an alarm, right? We need to distract her. Luckily -"

"Not lucky for me!"

"- It turned out she had a thing for strapping young Aryan men. And Steve, being the selfless soldier that he is -"

"No!" Alvie shrieked, clapping her hands over her ears. "I don't wanna hear the rest! I don't want that mental image!"

"Did you get to the basement?"

"Oh, yeah," said Bucky, "that wasn't the only base Steve reached that night, was it?"

"I hate you, Barnes."

"I know, bud."

"So, when they talk about your people doing terrible things in times of war -"

"That didn't even make it into a mission report," Steve said, hiding his face in his hands. "Oh, God. I thought I would never have to talk about that again."

"You brought it up," Bucky pointed out, curling a few strands of Alvie's hair around his finger as he talked.

"I'd blocked the details from my memory."

"I hadn't."

"Well, I know _that._ You never shut up about it."

"But it's my favorite Captain America story!" Bucky protested.

"I still don't know where the French accent came from."

"Women love French accents, Steve. Everyone knows that."

"You son of a bitch!" Steve exclaimed. "You were planning it from the beginning, weren't you?"

"Women never like my French accent," Alvie mumbled.

"You're not French, Al."

"Shush," she said. "I'm being bitter."

"You're drunk," Bucky told her, pushing the strands of hair he was holding behind her ear.

"That, too." She sunk down on her seat, resting her head on his lap. She fell into a light doze for a while, snatches of the men's conversation filtering into nonsensical dream words, and a while later someone had lifted her to her feet.

"Come on, sweetheart. I can't carry you with one arm."

"You can have a go," she protested feebly, and yawned. She couldn't remember the last time she had got a proper night's sleep. She had barely got more than an hour or two a day since her meeting with Ross, and before that her sleep schedule had been as erratic as ever. Now, she was tempted to join Bucky in cryo, just so nobody could wake her up for a year or two.

"This is us." Bucky waited for the security to scan his retinas and the door opened onto the little cluster of rooms that T'Challa had said was hers for as long as she needed it. They didn't feel much like home yet, but she would have to make them so. Gods, she missed her house. It was probably impractical to have her Ghia shipped over here, right? It wasn't exactly built for jungle terrain. Eva had better be taking good care of it.

"That ogog went straight to my head," she slurred, "first thing we do if we ever get back to the US, you're buying me a cosmopolitan."

"Fine. But you owe me a double Jack, too." He led her through the little reception room and into her bedroom, kicking the door closed behind him so he didn't have to let go of her. "Steady, Kennings. Easy does it." He laughed at her as she stumbled out of her shoes. "It's a date."

"Bucky," she said softly.

"What?"

"... This is our last night on earth," she murmured, "gotta make it count."

"It actually isn't."

"It actually is." She rested her forehead on his chest, trying to engrave every part of the moment into her memory - the moonlight, the silent base, the warmth of his skin and his familiar smell. "I love you."

"Love you too." His voice, coarse and catching slightly on the last word. His one remaining hand on her back. How had they ended up here? A Brooklyn boy from the 1940s and a New Orleans hacker, deep in the Wakandan jungle after a series of events that defied even her belief. "You don't have to stay here for me, Al. I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm not leaving you," she said, "never again. Stop trying to get rid of me, 'cause it ain't gonna work, Barnes. I'm staying."

Once, she had thought his eyes were the color of gun metal. Now she thought they were like more like melting ice, shining and indefinite. "Okay," he said.

She clasped her hands behind his neck and tried really, _really_ hard not to cry. "It would be so easy for you to hate me," she whispered, "for helping them find you, for Zemo, for getting myself stuck in prison when I should have been looking out for you. You should _loathe_ me."

"I can't," he said. "Hey. Look at me. You know I can't."

"Why?"

"Because I'm just as much of a fuck-up as you are," he said with a sad smile. "The real world's a nightmare, right?"

She laughed in such a way that it sounded rather like a sob. "Right," she agreed, "I never understood it anyway."

"That makes two of us." Perhaps it was a trick of the light, perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but for a moment Alvie thought that Bucky's eyes were overly bright too. "Come on. Last night on earth, right?"

She kissed him for as long as she could without running out of breath, then took his one good hand and led him to the bed.

"I love you," she breathed, as she pulled him on top of her. "Don't ever forget that."

"I won't. I can't. I love you too."

And he proved it, over and over again, until they fell asleep wrapped around each other like they were never going to be apart again. Alvie cradled her lover's head on her chest, running her fingers through his hair and leaving the softest possible kisses on his forehead, and felt the same peace she had found in churches of Harlem and New Orleans. Bucky was sleeping as soundly as a child without nightmares, and they were safe as two fugitive killers could be.

They were okay. At long last, they were actually, finally, okay.

 **A/N I LOVE WRITING WAR STORIES. If I didn't already have a ridiculous amount of active fics, I'd probably have one that was just the various escapades of the Howling Commandos. I might have to put some in the Civilian Files at some point. Anyway - there's only two chapters left of this act, but I'll do two interludes and you can expect act three around when Black Panther comes out... probably.**


	41. Act II Chapter XVII

**CHAPTER XVII**

It was a given that Bucky would wake up at the sunrise, most likely only about an hour after Al had fallen asleep. Battle fatigue made for a good alarm, and his nightmares were as regular as clockwork. He sat up as light bathed their room and looked down at Alvie, lying on her front with the bedsheets pulled away since, she repeatedly told him, he had a habit of cocooning himself in them. She looked like some kind of nymph with her face calm and placid as she slept, her hair in a perfect tangle on the pillow and the skin of her back soft and flawless. Bucky leant down and kissed the nape of her neck, between her shoulder blades, the small of her back, and (not for the first time) gave thanks for the fact that she slept naked.

Her hand had been resting on his chest; now it had fallen off of him she mumbled something in her sleep and curled her slender fingers around the sheets, pulling them back towards her. Bucky realized that, despite the fact that he was about to go into cryo for God knew how long, he didn't have the heart to wake her. She didn't get enough sleep as it was, and what with everything that had happened to her recently she deserved to rest. The cryostasis chamber was completely prepared, all they needed to do was put him in there and press a button – Bucky pulled the sheets up over Alvie and found a pen and some paper.

 _Al –_

 _This looks like the coward's way out of saying goodbye. It probably is. Sorry._

He ground to a halt in his heartfelt soliloquy trapped in ink. Stuff like this was most certainly not his forte.

 _Don't do anything dumb. Don't blame yourself for what happened. You probably helped save my life. Again. None of this is your fault, and if it was I would still love you. You did good. You're safe now. You're okay. Just don't tell Stark where I am. Listen to the king, but not if he's wrong._

It was starting, he realized, to look an awful lot like a checklist. _That_ probably wasn't good. He didn't want to wake up in the near-distant future to find Alvie raging at him because the last contact he had had with her was him essentially giving her instructions on how to behave while he was gone. There was also a fairly good chance that she would do the complete opposite out of stubbornness, so he wracked his brains to find something that would make her less pissed off at him.

 _Thanks for not being scared of me. Not even when you should have been._

 _B x_

Well, that would have to do. He stood up, folded the paper and left it propped up by a glass of water on the bedside table. She had been here less than a week, and already the clinically clean guest's suite was beginning to take on distinct signs of Alvie-ness; her handwriting was scrawled over the smooth white walls like black spiders, and scientific equipment was jumbled up in front of the mirror with cosmetics. Bucky felt a pang of loss at never having seen the house that she had been so proud of, but then figured that it would have been a complete mess anyway. He knew how she lived, and if he had not had such good patience in the weeks after they had first met it would have driven him insane.

Battle fatigue… it seemed that the more he became human, the worse it got. Earlier Steve had called it PTSD, which sounded unpleasantly clinical, but Bucky had grown up with the word _shellshock_ being used in his home more commonly than milk of magnesia, from the very day his father had come home from war. _It's just the shellshock,_ his mom had said. As though it excused the drinking, the arguing, the bruises along her cheek that matched the ones on the back of his hand. _It was the shellshock,_ she had explained to her neighbors when he had walked out with a bottle of bourbon and his silver medal, ready to pawn, before Bucky had even been big enough to reach the top shelf. _It's not him. It's the shellshock._ She had used the word like a Band-aid, but Bucky had hated it. Shellshock, for him, meant inexcusable cruelty, unforgivable cowardice. And now he had it, too.

He couldn't fix that. But he could fight it, and he could at least stop himself from being a danger to others. And the nightmares… they never seemed as painful during cryo.

After showering and dressing in the weird white scrubs one of the scientists had left outside the door, he made his way to the lab for the final scans before time, for him, froze. Malara, the neuroscientist, gave him a questioning look.

"She's asleep," Bucky said, as she took a blood sample.

"You love her?" Malara asked, in a heavier version of T'Challa's accent.

"None of your business," Bucky replied, and the woman smiled.

"My sister is one of the Milaje. She and I, we will look after her for you."

Bucky nodded his thanks, and Malara bowed her head in return. "Don't tell her you are, or she'll riot," he advised her.

"Of course. His royal highness and the captain are waiting for you in the next room."

He followed the scientist's directions into the laboratory which housed Wakanda's entire collection of cryonics equipment, which was dominated by the cryostasis chamber. _Home, sweet home,_ Bucky thought wryly, casting it a paranoid glance as he headed for the only two figures not dressed like scientists. He could deal with lab coats as long as he wasn't outnumbered, but so many doctors at once gave him unpleasant memories of HYDRA experiments.

"Hey," said Steve. "I bet this must feel like Groundhog Day to you."

Bucky gave him a mildly impressed look. "You've seen that film?"

"Of course I've seen that film. Who hasn't seen that film?"

"Me," said T'Challa. "Sergeant, if you would take a seat while we perform the last few tests needed…"

"Never?" Steve asked, as the nth scientist that day wrapped a BP monitor around Bucky's upper arm. "You've never seen Groundhog Day?"

"Media from the outside world tends not to do well here," the king shrugged. "Even what you consider to be classics struggle to fight their way out of obscurity."

"But it _is_ a classic!" Steve protested. "It's got Bill Murray in it!"

"He's got a point," Bucky agreed, watching his pulse's regular rhythm on the monitor. It was slower than he would have thought, betraying his calmness. He felt trepidation, of course, at the thought of falling back out of the world he had suffered through so much to rejoin, but he was content with his decision. Knowing that he was about to do the right thing for once gave him an odd feeling of peace.

He knew Steve disagreed. But then, of course he would – he thought all problems could be solved by standing one's ground, by fighting, by never backing down. But Bucky had faced far harsher realities than Steve could ever imagine, and knew that the world wasn't fair, that only a mad, brave fool would stand and fight. Sometimes you had to take the path chosen for you, you had to _deal_ with it, because standing your ground and fighting for what you believed in was how wars happened. And for all the Captain America campaign had advertised, there were no heroes in war. There were only decisions made by other people, and orders you had to obey. Paths you had to follow. And consequences, shitty fucking consequences that always hit the people who never deserved it.

"Then I shall add it to my ever-growing list of things I must address," T'Challa said gravely, like he was talking about an important matter of state and not a nineties comedy.

This was just another path, another set of orders. But what made it different, what made it good, was that Bucky was the one making the decisions. _No,_ he thought, looking at Steve's half-hidden brooding expression, _it's not fair. But me walking away from this a free man? That's a whole lot worse._

"Follow me, sergeant."

Bucky did as he was told and left Steve with T'Challa by the window, perching himself on the edge of a sleek hospital bed. More tests were done, more blood taken, and he watched as the vital sign monitors on the screens around him were updated to a live feed. He imagined Alvie flitting around them, a mental picture that came all too easily, and turned his attention to the focal point of the room, the cylinder that would be his home for the next god-knows-how-long.

As an orderly trotted away with one last syringe of his DNA, Steve wandered over with his hands stuck deep in his pockets and a sympathetic expression on his face. _Here it comes,_ Bucky thought wryly.

"You sure about this?"

He took one last look at the shimmering room around him, drinking it all in, and sighed. How the hell was he meant to put this into words for his oldest friend? It was hard enough expressing himself to Alvie, and at least she could be relied upon to fill in the gaps. "I can't trust my own mind," he said softly and snorted, looking away from Steve as he found himself unable to keep his attention from the cryo chamber. "So until they figure out how to get this stuff out of my head, I think going under is the best thing…" Steve looked down and nodded, clearly unhappy at the raging injustice of the world. "… For everybody," Bucky added, as an afterthought. _Not just me and you, bud._

It was odd… as he found his gaze drawn back to the chamber, Bucky felt himself smile.

Yeah. Peace. Time to end the war.

Bucky Barnes slept.

 **A/N there's a fairly good chance that this fic will reach 700 followers before the end of Act II and oh. my. god. Y'all are the bomb diggity.**


	42. Act II Chapter XVIII

**CHAPTER XVIII**

Alvie sat on the floor by the window with Bucky's letter in one hand, not looking at it but the jungle outside. She was crying, but only a little.

 _Why didn't he wake me up?_

 _Because saying goodbye would be too painful. Better to leave it like this._

There was an odd feeling in her stomach, a strange sense of stillness that she had never felt before. It took her a while to identify that she was, for the first time in her life, calm. There was no niggling worry at the back of her head, no immediate threat, everyone she cared about was safe. Last night she had slept without nightmares, and today she did not even have a hangover. There was work to be done, things to keep her hands busy, but it was not imperative to be done at once. She was, well and truly, okay.

She was jerked out of her reverie by Athena's phone call alert.

 _Answer._

"Tony? Should you be calling me?" she asked, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah. I, uh... I'm sorry, Kennings."

"Pretty outta character," she said.

"Right. Well, now I got that out of the way... why'd you do it?"

"What?" she asked, "leak Bu - Barnes' location, or help Zemo with the HYDRA files?"

" _What?!"_

"Oh," she said, "right. You didn't know about that, did you? Well, I didn't know that they were about the Winter Soldier programme, and I didn't know what he was gonna use them for. Please don't tell Ross."

"I won't," said Tony. He sounded awfully tired. "Jesus, Alvie. You're a busy woman."

"I know. I guess... I guess you were asking about me leaking the location, then."

"No shit."

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "The Accords... They're the right thing to do. But not now. Not like this, not getting Barnes caught in the crossfire. He's a victim."

"He - he killed my damn parents!"

She stopped herself from saying "I know", lest he cotton on that her and Bucky were acquainted. "HYDRA killed your parents, Tony. He was just the weapon. Look - I'm not gonna argue with you about this. I'm done arguing. Having principles and sticking to them is a sure-fire way to get yourself killed, you noticed that?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I did. You know who didn't? Rogers."

"General Jingo's just as much in the wrong as you are. Merdé. Can't you people just learn to talk about stuff?" she said with a weak laugh. "Tony, are you sure you're alright?"

There was a long pause. "No," he said eventually, "I'm not. But thanks for caring."

"That was sarcastic, wasn't it?"

"Bye, Kennings. Enjoy your diplomatic immunity."

"Love you too."

She hung up and sighed, burying her face in her hands. It had only been a couple of hours, and she already missed Bucky – more specifically, she missed having someone she could bitch with about anyone and everyone else. Around him, she didn't have to pretend to be a nice person like she had been doing with the Wakandan scientists recently – other people were _exhausting,_ but Bucky was a curious exception. Perhaps it was because he too struggled with all that stuff.

Just as they had done when taking her to the Harlem church, her legs took over and carried her restless mind away from where it had been sitting. She found herself, unsurprisingly, in the cryostasis lab – or at least going through the doorway of it, at which point she walked face first into a wall of muscle.

"Oh," she said, "sorry."

"Don't worry about it," said Steve, and paused awkwardly. "I'm… going, now."

"Bye."

He stared at her for half a moment, then laughed. People did that a lot around Alvie, she had noticed. Like they were having so much trouble figuring her out that they just decided not to take her seriously.

 _Bucky never did that. He took_ everything _seriously._

 _Well, he's not exactly the joking type._

She realised Steve was talking. "… and look after him for me," he was saying, and gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I'm trusting you on this."

 _Bit patronizing._

 _Let it slide, Kennings. He's a captain, after all._

"I'll try not to lose him," she said. "Enjoy your holidays."

"Thanks. Stay safe, Miss Kennings," he said with a small salute, and walked away.

As the door closed behind Rogers, it hit Alvie that with his departure also left the last link to a world outside this sanctuary, outside Wakanda, to the world she had once called home and been so utterly unsuited to. Now, with her ward and lover entombed in ice, she was alone. The name Kennings, the name _Athena,_ meant nothing here. It felt… odd.

Alvie took a deep breath and held it, swelling her lungs until it felt like they would burst and her ribs would shatter. She clenched her fists, rose onto tiptoe, closed her eyes and sunk back into her own mind, into the familiar. The same old voices ran laps around each other in her head, bickering and dissenting and almost drowning out the real world. She listened to all of them at once, as best she could, then exhaled, opened her eyes and looked out of the window at the baking midday sun.

 _I've done bad things,_ was the last lingering whisper of a thought, _and I've tried so hard to do good. I think I'm finally starting to figure out the difference between right and wrong, and this place is so pure I think it would be impossible to do anything evil here. Bucky's safe, of his own free will. I'm safe. We're okay. And I have everything I need to fix him again._

The rainforest light, heavy liquid light, crept across her skin as it filtered through the water-laden foliage. Beyond the reinforced glass, the cries of prehistoric nature could be heard, and behind the doors the sounds of a laboratory hard at work mixed and mingled with them, creating a unique and deeply comforting ambience. Alvie buried her nose in the collar of the shirt she was wearing, and breathed in the faint lingering smell of cordite and sweat that suffused its worn fabric. Bucky's smell. On her skin, the cuts and bruises were already fading.

 _It's going to be a beautiful day._

 **END OF ACT TWO**

 **A/N guys. GUYS. WHY IS THIS SO POPULAR? I love all of you, and thank you so much for sticking with me for two whole acts. And in case you thought you had finally escaped this - fool. You are wrong. Expect interludes to be uploaded on or around Valentine's Day intermittently until the Black Panther movie comes out, and keep an eye on Coffee Run, too, because I'm always a slut for crossovers. And you can follow Alvie on twitter too, her handle being 'kxnnings' (I can't put the little at sign thing because otherwise the formatting deletes the whole word, but you get the idea). Anyway. See you later. And, once again, I love you.**


	43. Interlude II

**INTERLUDE II**

"My babe would never fret none  
About what my hands and my body done  
If the Lord don't forgive me  
I'd still have my baby and my babe would have me"

 _\- Work Song, Hozier_

The laboratories in the Wakandan sanctuary were massive and so state-of-the-art they made the rest of the world look like something from the 1970s. Alvie had a small fleet of scientists who all seemed perfectly happy to keep busy whenever she did not need them, but when she _did_ they were so eager to help it was almost unnerving. They were all native to the country, and within a few months Alvie was talking to them in Wakandan and Yoruba as much as much as they talked to her in French and English. T'Challa dropped by a fair amount (she suspected he liked talking to someone who didn't bow and scrape), but most of the time she was alone, free to work as she wished.

Slowly, softly, people had started approaching Athena again when they figured that Ross had probably overreacted with the whole "enemy of the state" thing. But she required full background checks of every client now, determined not to repeat the Zemo incident, and Athena quickly became infamous for her wariness around governments. Meanwhile people continued to look for her and the price that remained on her head due to Ross' pig-headedness, but they would never find her here.

And, every Saturday night, she sat on a cushion by the cryostasis chamber and read to Bucky. Eva had recommended a load of books and she was now slowly working her way through a pile of classics, bestsellers, and obscure little things that still managed to stick in the brain. He probably couldn't even hear her, but it made Alvie feel better. Most nights she fell asleep against the chilly crystal case halfway through a sentence.

Tonight, however, was different. Tonight was _important,_ and more importantly, it was a _secret._ Thankfully, the date meant all the scientists were otherwise engaged, and Alvie had her wing of the sanctuary to herself.

She missed New England like hell, but the Wakandan view out of the floor-to-ceiling windows in her apartment was objectively breathtaking. Eva had been regularly shipping her clothes over to her, and tonight, by the last brilliant light of sunset in the sunset filtering through the mountains, she made a genuine effort with her appearance. She washed her hair, which was now long enough to fall past her shoulderblades, put on make-up, and wore a dress from the 1940s and nice shoes as opposed to a tatty shirt and underwear beneath a white lab coat. She stood up and checked her reflection in the window; her skin had darkened under the African sun, she had done so much heavy lifting in the lab that her arms had a little more muscle to them, and under the watch of T'Challa's excellent chef she had gained a little weight. She looked better than she had done in years, tucked away in this little Eden with her boyfriend frozen in time.

The room that held the cryo chamber was empty, just like the rest of the lab, as the evening star rose outside and turned the verdant jungle into a million shades of gray. She switched on half the lights and took a seat at the computer that was linked up to the chamber, typing in a code that only her and a couple other people in the world knew, and a bright white light pulsed in the chamber. Heart hammering in her chest Alvie walked up to the door, braced herself, wrapped both hands around the handle and pulled with all her might.

Bucky Barnes fell out onto his hand and knees, heaving great gasps of air that turned to mist when he exhaled. Frost still leafed out over his face and clumped his hair together, but he was awake enough to stagger back onto his feet and grab her shoulder with his one remaining hand.

"What is it?" he panted, face deathly serious with the expression of someone ready to engage in mortal combat at any moment. "What happened?"

"It's Valentine's Day!" she said, holding her arms out in celebration. "Ya-a-ay!"

Bucky stared at her. "You woke me up," he said, "for… Valentine's Day."

Alvie faltered. It occurred to her that he had only expected to be woken up in case of an emergency, which this, all things considered, was not. "Well... yeah," she said, "but I haven't told anyone. Wait... this was a bad idea, wasn't it? Oh, _merdé_. This was a terrible idea. Bucky, I'm so sorry - ahh! Get off a'me!" she giggled, as he picked her up and spun her around with one arm. "I spent so much time on my hair, don't you freakin' dare mess it up!"

He set her down, kissed her, leant back and grinned. "Really bad idea," he agreed, "never do it again. Definitely don't make it a tradition."

She brushed a flake of ice from his cheek. "I missed you," she said.

"Huh."

"You're _supposed_ to say 'I missed you too, Alvie,'" she replied with a pout.

Bucky was still smiling, which was probably some kind of personal record. "Y'know time doesn't pass in cryostasis, right?"

"Yeah," said Alvie, "but _still._ So waddaya wanna do today, Sergeant Barnes? There's a shooting range in here, you could show me how to use a sniper or something."

Something closed off in Bucky's expression; an iron wall slammed down behind his eyes and Alvie, a human barometer for feeling, instinctively took a step back. _You blew it,_ she told herself. _Not one minute together and you blew it._ This was the part where he stormed off to go and beat somebody up. Just like the good old days.

 _Don't let yourself ruin this, Kennings._

"Or," she said tentatively, "we could sneak up on the roof and play chess, and not have to fire any kinds of weapons at all."

Bucky looked down at the floor and laughed softly, kicking at the veneer surface with his heel. "Sounds like a date," he said.

%

"No," said Alvie, "if you move that pawn then you'll lose your knight." She grabbed his wrist and moved it to one of the other white pieces instead, guiding his movements rather than forcing them. "See? Now I won't be able to reach your king for at least another six moves."

"Great," said Bucky weakly. "It just keeps going."

"You gotta think long-term when you make your move, _mon cher_ _._ Not just the immediate target, but the effects of it. That's how it works."

"Is it?" Bucky asked, twisting his fingers around hers like two time-stepping spiders. "Nobody ever told me."

Alvie smiled, tracing her thumb up the inside of his wrist. It was one of the few parts of Bucky's body where the skin was still soft and unbroken, and she followed the blue, twisting lines of his veins just beneath. Compared to her own dark skin, he looked paler than ever. White as winter. "Sorry for bringing up shooting stuff."

"'S okay," he mumbled, looking at their tangled hands rather than her.

"It's just – I was wondering – why it wasn't a good thing to do," she said, and added hastily, "just so I don't do it again. I ain't being nosy, I swear."

"Sure, you're not."

"I _swear_!" Alvie protested, and Bucky raised an eyebrow. "Don't give me that look, Barnes. Like you know what I'm thinking. Ain't nobody knows what I'm thinking but _me._ "

"Except when you say stuff out loud," Bucky said under his breath.

"What's that?"

"Nothing," he said quickly. "And it's – _it's_ nothing. Don't like that I know how to, that's all."

"How to what?"

"How to fire the damn things," he murmured. "With the same hands I use to touch you. It's not right."

"You sound like an old man," Alvie teased him, but he didn't bite. Instead he stayed looking at the multicolored mess of fingers, eyebrows lowered as he wallowed in tumultuous thought.

"It's just so… easy. The snipers are the worst," he continued. "Even before I died, they put a sniper in my hands and told me to aim at anyone in Ratzy clothes."

 ** _Ratzy: WWII slang used for German soldiers,_** Athena chimed in helpfully, **_conjunction of "rat" and "Nazi"._**

 _Never mind that,_ Alvie thought, _comfort him._

 _Look at his face. He doesn't want comfort, he wants catharsis. Let him talk. Hold his hand and let the blood flow like leechings._

"It's a shitty weapon to be good at. A coward's weapon. Shoot from a distance, stay out of danger. Not that I ever managed that well, but I guess it's balanced out by all the other ways I know how to kill people up close."

 _I hate this. I hate that he's tearing himself apart._

 _So what? When he's done, stitch him back together. Just like I've been doing since we first met._

"I was jealous of him," he said, prompted by wanderings of the mind that she was not privy to seeing. "Steve. Did I ever tell you that? He always got to be the good one. It was so natural to him, he never even had to think about it. He had... honor. I always thought, at least I was bigger than him, faster than him. And then along came Captain America, gleaming and golden, and he didn't need me anymore. I hated it, and I hated that I was being such a selfish asshole and I just... I just stopped caring," he finished, "I didn't give a damn who we were even fighting. You have to stop thinking of them as people if you want to be a halfway decent soldier, anyway, or you can't pull the trigger. You pretend they're just another target. HYDRA barely had to do anything to condition me into a killing machine, I was halfway there already."

"Don't," Alvie said fiercely, "don't you dare say that. You died for him, Bucky. Don't act like that doesn't mean anything, because it does. And don't tell me you stopped caring about the people you killed, either, because that's impossible. I know you. I know when you're lying."

Bucky's eyes were overly bright. "I remember them," he whispered. "All of them. Every damn one."

"Oh, my love. I know." She crawled over into his lap, scattering chess pieces everywhere, and cradled his head against her breast. "It's okay to hurt, it's okay to care, and love, and hate and be jealous. You're human, _cher._ It's an occupational hazard."

"It hurts." He was holding onto her like a drowning man clings to a rock in a seastorm.

"A necessity of living, baby. Would you rather feel nothin' at all?"

He didn't reply, which was answer enough for her. Alvie kissed the top of his head, running her spider fingers through his hair. "Thank you," she whispered.

"For what?"

"For letting me in."

He looked up and pressed his lips to hers, for as long as they could both manage without drawing breath. "I'm not something to be thankful for," he said to her, breath fluttering strands of her hair. "You deserve more than... than me."

"You, Sergeant Barnes, leave that for me to decide." She kissed him again. "Now, come on, boy. It's our last night on earth. Gotta make it count."  
%

"Alvie. Alvie, wake up."

"Mmnh?" she jerked upright, and T'Challa handed her a mug of coffee. "Oh. Thanks, man." She took an experimental sip and grimaced. "Eva flew all the way over here and she didn't even show ya how to make a decent cup a'joe."

T'Challa pulled a chair out from under the desk she had fallen asleep at and sat down. "Did you go into the laboratory last night?" he asked Alvie, who paused with the mug halfway to her mouth.

"No," she said slowly, "why?"

"Sensors picked up two people in there. The odd thing," T'Challa continued with a twinkle in his eye, "is that they could not have got in there with a security pass - but, as you say, if you were the only one in the base and you were not one of them..."

Alvie took a mouthful of grainy coffee. "Ain't like I got anybody to take with me, is it? Only ole Frosty here." She reached back and tapped her knuckles against the cryo chamber. "And he's not going anywhere."

T'Challa nodded. "Forgive me, Miss Kennings," he said, "but you seem tired. Have you been losing sleep at all recently? Any nocturnal activities keeping you awake?"

Alvie choked on her coffee and T'Challa smiled, getting to his feet.

"I suppose we shall never know. Oh, and the University of Wakanda has asked me to pass this on," he added, handing her a heavy cream envelope. "I believe it is an invite to deliver a guest lecture on neural processing technologies. Many of my people consider the trapping of the mind and soul in technology to be impossible, if not sinful... I would be interested to see how you may convince them otherwise."

"I dunno, your majesty. I am pretty sinful," Alvie said, recalling how she had spent the previous night. "I'll see you around."

T'Challa bowed his head to her before leaving. You didn't get much more humble than a king crowned before his time.

"I think we evaded suspicion there, don't you?" Alvie asked, pulling open her desk drawer and dropping the envelope into it. She pulled out a battered edition of the George and the Dragon story, dropped a cushion on the floor and opened it to the last marked page.

 ** _Now playing on surround sound: Mama Cass - Dream A Little Dream of Me_**

Inside the icy world of eternal sleep, Bucky dreamt of dragons.

 **A/N I have returned from the void with seasonal romantic tomfoolery!**


End file.
